Scion

Issue 8 | Summer 2022 |

 

 

Take yellow—new flame
             flickering cool
             out of scrap. Or

lemon: fruit implying
             flower, implying branch—
             fuel for a hotter fire

to smoke the cloudless night
             with citrus. Sour candies
             in cellophane, stashed

in the back of Grandma Tucker’s
             silver drawer, first place
             to look after the long drive—

the old Volvo’s water pump
             burst halfway, that car’s
             a lemon, Mom says

in the yellow waiting room
             while Dad pays
             the mechanic. Time before

it all turned sour. These days
             you can go anywhere
             without leaving home.

Make lemonade, they say, but I
             like starting over. Some people
             collect art or model trains,

I collect splinters
             of lemon wood, grafted
             onto hardier stock. Isn’t that

how everything starts?
             Meanings, too. Remember
             the limb, bowed to the ground

with lemon, orange, grapefruit,
             lime? No wild tree
             would carry all that weight.