31 Jul Back 40: Audiences

Four apple trees, boughs planed,
hover shoulder-height above the ground,

trunks twisted,
coiled like dancers
at the moment of a pivot.
If these trees were to move,
make their turns, reread the grooves
creasing their bark,
their red fruit would fly off into the dark
and scatter far over the grass —
like beads of sweat
flinging from the dancers’ necks and brows,
pollinating an audience.
Only here, at the farm, those in attendance
are the crickets
who come to throb in a rite
as a single voice each night.