V
Could pass for any forest, were it not for each tree’s plaque and hundred-year lease. Hello, orchard dream that shadows me into a foreshadowing. Always in mist, a mother’s apron loaded with fruit–the dates and places on file, the thrift shop’s bronze baby shoes, the intimate stash nobody finds. Morning tries explaining the dream as a blur of tree farm along I-40. My friend says her mother’s cremains feed an oak which will accommodate the whole family and I’m back in the orchard. Wet grass without footprints. Hello, peripheral ghost. Mom didn’t talk about what becomes of us. But she wrote down some recipes in a wide-ruled notebook; her fine script read in her voice, the ingredients of mist.