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The Tree









Years since it bore an apricot.

Many more since it bore many.

Half the trunk rotted, fallen,

gathered in the windrows by the field.

On mossy branches raspberries

grow, making rainbows.


But every spring, around

my mother's yahrzeit

it remembers (as do I)

and blossoms in the palest pinks

fiercely, profusely, fragile.


Nothing will come of it, as nothing

comes of me, except forgetting,

except small bits of me riding away

on petals on the wind.

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