Open your eyes. Look around.
It's my idea to wind these backroads,
to shuttle her out of the house
into springtime down in the valley
but the car sways like a lullaby
and she closes her eyes against the aching
abundance of orchards in bloom.
The occasional specks of pollen
relinquishing their allegiance to the petals
and hinting the wind with fragrance,
they are all I have to give.
I will not be there
(when the road steepens and veers
a lifetime away from recovery)
to feed and change her,
to ladle out the morphine.

Coasting slower and slower,
I envision myself
high up in those branches
and reaching higher yet,
hoping for any fruit
that swells beneath the leaves.
And the crown of that tree
bobs under the perishable load
of my body. I pluck each cluster
of Bing cherries dangling
within reach like earrings for the one
waiting below amidst the windfalls,
now opening her eyes and gazing up
at this boy too high in a tree,
this boy she no longer recognizes
as one of her own.