Orchard Ecologue

Girl:

If I could assimilate,
melt down and incubate
in-between layers of air, slipping
in those spaces where it rushes over skin,
pooling in the crook of your collarbone
as you work to pick apples
in fluid shadows,
if I could become all the soft body words
imprinted on you: throat and lips, eyelids
and palms, cold from September
and warming with our rhythm,
all the earth-scents coalescing.
The lights don't break the dusk here
as I pulse and rise,
a heart in a field
bitten to the bone.

Boy:

There aren't enough arms, sticking like pins
into the cracked-angle branches.
We may lose it yet.
We'll sell spring.

There's no money in trees, in things
that part the skin and soil,
in suffering the seasons,
in wintering.
I can't eat the dark
or the quiet;
I can't harvest shadows
or your shoulders.