Poems

I love my creative writing class. It's a chance to finally put to use the things that I jot down and think about all the time. We just finished up our poetry unit and here is one hot off the press (or the Blogosphere).

In the Orange Glow of Apricots

The sunlight leapt, with my gaze, out the large glass windows
And into the yard, up the trunk.
There, light met the warm apricot tree in full bloom
The twisting branches reaching up remind me of the littleness of us
With tube socks and patterned stretch pants, scaling up the tree to the tippy top
Only to find we were too scared to climb back down alone.

We climbed in the attitude of invincibility,
The kind that cloaked our innocence in courage
And watched as our hands
Worked their way, branch over branch,
Beyond what we thought we could climb.
The summers slipped more slowly then,
With afternoons spent in saturated sunshine and swinging from limbs

Our invincibility lost vitality the day we found out
Your mom was sick in a serious way.
We ran to the base of the trunk and
In sunlit shadows climbed, this time with purpose, resolve,
Necessity to get above the news, up the branches to fresh air.
We sat there and breathed in the scent of orange and yellow fruit
Which was growing and dropping to the ground
Like us.

I went back a day ago to see it,
The gnarled bark wrapping towards the sky
Drew my eyes upward as I stood remembering the time
When we used to fit between the branches
And let the closeness of the leaves
Hold us while we watched the patterns of dancing light
And waited for the rain to stop.