Peach Tree Grove

There is a lady on a bridge sipping a cigarette through a veil.  She has been there a long, long time, and the sayings of everyone all say a different thing.  "A heartbroken Italian mistress," they say. "A promiscuous Mexican murderess." And so she seems, shirt open, the space between bare, breasts just barely covered.  "She died drunk in a car," they whisper. "She dropped down into the water." Sunglasses shaped like a cat's make them blind to her eyes, and she sips her cigarette like a convict enjoying a meal. Her veil is edged with white lace in a thick band and dyed bright scarlet, the color of clay in the earth, or of a feather from a jealous parrot's plumage.  She sips her cigarette through sheer scarlet and leans carelessly against the rail as water darker than her hair rushes underneath. A smile curls under eyes that reflect as a cat's as a cigarette meets veil meets lips.  A heartbroken Italian mistress, she died drunk in a ca...

    Behind the shed there is a row of purple-blue hydrangeas leading to a corner guarded by a cherry tree and a rose. When the rose blooms on its trellis it will bloom yellow and red, the sun spotting Joseph's layered coat as it sets down to rest. For now "now" is not "when,"so the rose climbs unclothes, thorns laid bare for all to see.      Around the corner the hydrangeas are asleep, bouquets brittle and dead adorning leafless stalks, waiting for clouds of purple-blue to cool and leaves with green deeper than the forest.      It is night here, in this corner I have cut from the world. At my back brush-stroken spruces stand silent sentry in the dark and ghostly light glitters down through my greeneried walls, while the stronger sixth of the stars peek down through a street-touched sky.      Movement, and I step up to balance on the garden bed's wooden beam as stark shadows stretch out from the underneath me, cloaking the unfound no...