apricotmap. // 26april

Make me a willow cabin at your gate
Twelfth Night, WS

for andrea, nisa and april in their birthmonth

Make me an apricotmap
So that I may walk out your gate in July, petalparchment in hand
And know where to introduce myself
To the fruitbearing trees
With their orangeglobes of delishdelight
Offered over mudbrick walls
On dryditches, in a triangle of kerbside dirt, peregrinating with scant rain and acequiawater,
seasons upon seasons
bitter winter years, the drought ones, the rare, blossoming spring
(they are immigrants like so much of what blooms here, our late frosts unwelcome)
An apricotmap for a gorging, delightdelish, meandering and movable summerfeast.

We have an uncle, really my mother’s cousin - so more avuncular than not,
Who roams New England backroads and fields in april and may
Searching for forgotten apple trees, white and pink pockets amidst effervescent newspring
Ones that hang low over crumblewalls, at hidden house corners, lone pilgrims by wetditches
Never brought to market, gathered like jewels for a fall and winter sweetbite.
Lost to us with migration and heartache.
He finds them. Cuts a branch. And returns home
To graft the mystery and bring its rare full fruit to his orchard
Saved for us humans (never lost to its birds, grass and ditches)
found like a gift
Unknown for seasons and seasons
Now gathered like jewels

I think sometimes, always smiling, of his fair Frankensteins, with a dozen or two types growing from one tree
And our uncle, sharing mysteries and maps as he wanders through an appleblossom persephonewaltz -
Each tree something old, now new
Something utterly treasured.