Apricot Press

Now that the trees have greened,
the beech in front of the HVAC factory
takes on the shape of a full human brain,
stemmed sturdy with a bark-skinned cord,
and in the gold wind of early May,
its amygdala flutters, its hippocampus waves,
its cerebellum trembles, its hypothalamus shifts,
and, from the moving folds of its frontal lobe,
shooting sunward as I drive by on my morning commute,
an idea, black and feathered, hooking the sky.

I know I’m out here somewhere,
among the wind’s dust, the leaf songs,
within the ant-bitten stack of firewood,
on beewings hovering by the rain-softened deck wood,
in the mosaic of birdseed, the ash of last night’s fire,
in the shimmering voices of cicadas at the brink of dusk.
I must be out here somewhere.
I go back inside and do not find myself
sleeping next to him.

Photo credit: 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič