should be easy. Can be hard to see
how a tree can be alive. Sure—
in early spring, the limbs look bare
when they contain many universes:
the imperceptible bugs that colony
and caper up and down the bark,
in between the starts of buds.
It takes people weeks to see them bloom
and melt back into their stalwart background.

This one leans the wrong way over KY-1295,
Every September it lets go a crop of vestigial fruit—
tropical green going custard,
two rows of seed big as thumbnails.
Fruits drop where they grew,
macerate onto the asphalt.

A Silverado takes one at fifty,
the scatter turning to liquor in the heat.
Ants and yellow-jackets and all else
brave the road to harvest
like no man will.

I’ve never felt easy to love,
though you could pluck it from me like a fruit.
If I were a tree,
I wouldn’t want you to see me
drop it all
and let it kiss the road.

If you called it anything,
you’d never even have to call it
love.