We snacked on cherries in the afternoon:
we clamped our legs onto the branches brown
and snapped the rubber stems from off the crown;
we washed them, sliced them open with a spoon
and scooped the seeds out, each a somber moon,
the grubby worms all squirming out of town,
afraid we’d rinse them down the sink to drown—
and then the cherries, finally cleaned and hewn,
ignited in our mouths, as soft as June.

But August ripened; Dad cut down the tree.
We settled on the stump and gnawed store grapes;
we jammed our teeth with sour plums in fall.
We still can’t clamber up a trunk to see
the birds at work on homemade cradle shapes,
the acorn gems that squirrels unearth and haul.

True: maybe the panda bear baby
had never met a man
and thus could not guess
just who these intruders were,
but the crudely costumed humans,
scooping him up in loose fake fur
that barely covered their gloves,
didn’t trick him.

Or maybe they did:
and he grew up
deeply believing that bears
hummed and hugged
when they held little cubs,
and so never seeing
the limits of his species,
he, too, kissed his infants
and blessed them into bed.

They’re forecasting flashlights,
pop-tarts, soup, warm boots,
overnight neighborhoods
of four-room igloos,
the mayor on tour
with his fire truck tech crew,
the cars for days unmoving,
buried in their graveyard rows—
and every pair of jeans soaked,
every sock snow-choked
and wilting in a carpet puddle,
frozen stubble, ten below—

but today it’s only misting—

and though I had believed
and dressed today accordingly—

it isn’t even cold,
and I’m misting in my coat,
and now out in this half-cloud
the words those prophets spoke
of a blizzard sound absurd—
like I’m living by a wisecrack,
a dramatic farmer’s almanac,
unnecessary heart attack

(and sometimes I’m not even sure
if You meant You would return)—

and oh tomorrow Your great snow
will cover all that I have known.

The straight strong letters of your ancestors’ name
stitched beneath the tag–
you alone
intended to keep your coat
long enough to lose it.

You sewed your own ideas
and stocked the pockets with patches and thread,
mending nips and cracks in the elbows
without throwing the whole theory away,
without flinging your fingers into the sleeves
of a new see-through designer belief.

My solid girl,
you saw eleven plastic knives bow down
and twelve tweeting little stars
fall with their fads and magazines prostrate
before your coat of faded colors,

and during the blizzard you stood buttoned,
you stood rooted, stitched of gravity,
you stood stitched of truth and buttons–
you gravitied, rooted of wool.

inverted sunflow’r—
black cows stem from a straw heap,
dangling by the teeth