Mid-spring, we’d step into our magnolias,
branches like a many-armed justice, dark
columned trunks brandishing the drilled-
in patterns of woodpeckers. They held us
as we stretched our wildly bruised legs,
leaned exhaustion against their beams,
sorting the mysteries of our boyhoods,
the mingled lies of parents and priests.
Our wrestled explorations with the body
were enough of a savage life, yet it must
have been our play that urged sweetness
through the knotty limbs in host-colored
flowers, the saved lightening of our long,
stunning summers, near-cloying blooms
older than bees, each a bright fruit skin
browned overnight by the moon’s agile
eye. These sad summers, magnolias no
longer witness the red seeds of secrets,
Kids have places to be that are not trees.
I look into their emptiness. Their fallen
leaf tiles of baked terra cotta scream out
when stepped on, such noise, giving me
away to neighbors who return hellos as
I walk by with Earl, children piling up
along our lives.