The Orchard Underneath

My grandmother buried letters

In a coffee can out back

Said the earth was better suited

For the things we can’t take back

There were pear trees by the fence line Bent like women after

work

And a scarecrow with my jacket

Keeping watch over the dirt

Some families plant their sorrow

Some let it rot in jars

Some call a wound an heirloom And pass it through the heart

There’s an orchard underneath Where the roots remember me

Where every bitter thing I swallowed Finds its way back into a

seed

There’s an orchard underneath

Growing crooked, growing deep

I have carried all its hunger

I have woken from its sleep

My father fixed the tractor With a bible in his hand Not

for faith or consolation

Just to keep from looking back

He said, “Son, don’t trust the weather

It will promise, then it takes”

Then he watched the sky for hours Like it owed him an

escape

I have worn another’s anger

Like a coat that almost fit

I have called the burdened bloodline

Just to make a home of it

There’s an orchard underneath

Where the roots remember me

Where every bitter thing I swallowed Finds its way back into a

seed

There’s an orchard underneath

Growing crooked, growing deep

I have carried all its hunger

I have woken from its sleep

Once I dug until my fingers

Found the coffee can below

But the letters all were empty

Nothing left but mold and holes

And I laughed until I trembled At the mercy of the ground

All this time I feared the secret

But the secret had worn out

Now the pear trees drop their bodies Soft and bruised into the

grass

Wasps get drunk on what is opened

Nothing living stays intact

I took my jacket from the scarecrow Let the straw man come

undone There are things that look like dying When the healing has

begun

There’s an orchard underneath Not a curse and not a key

Just the dark doing its labor

Making something out of me