Today's poem is by Christopher Citro

Peel the Black Walnut Bark Like Small Fists in Our Fists
       

I want to lift last year's maple leaves
from below the wall, damp soil rising
to my lungs, something becoming
something else. Someone might come
chainsaw all this down around us, but
they'll have to cut through my biceps first.
That includes the wild cherry, includes
you. Changing your pants in the car.
A gas station shining like a shoreline.
I photograph all this blinking at it,
wet images laid across my brain mud.
Your face above the tomato bowl.
Your neck stretching to the sunflower,
its leaves like stubble against your cheek.
Rise, I tell myself. Rise from this tendency
to taste the cucumber skin and think of
mom gone, dad gone, your friend took
herself from the world, leaving you
with watercolors. Sometimes a willow.
Sometimes a map. When the heads drop,
the seeds face the soil. Crows find them
anyway, hang upside down, raise
their mouths to bite up at the sky.

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Copyright © 2023 Christopher Citro All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission