Drought runs as a headline. Crops mature off season,
keeping farmers courting their fields with desperate
attention, dissolution threatened in limp stalks.
I thought, beyond the glass, my tree was a tree,
with no discernible attributes, a toss away seed
that found a home and stretched, providing a slit of privacy.
It is not a year of wonderment. Holes have been dug,
and I am too tired to fill them. But on that tree—nondescript
thing of wilted leaves that has never revealed its name—
hangs a single slash of red, a kiss of a cherry,
asking to be left or harvested,
I must decide, I have only one.
Lauren Davis is a poet living on the Olympic Peninsula in a Victorian seaport community. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and her work can be found in publications such as Prairie Schooner, Spillway, and Lunch Ticket. Her chapbook, Woman with Desire, Pain, is forthcoming from dancing girl press. She also teaches at The Writers’ Workshoppe in Port Townsend, WA, and works as an editor at The Tishman Review.