Scion
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.