for Bill Patterson
There’s an apple tree in the salt meadow,
its trunk backswept by the years
of winter gales, advancing in retreat, so
if it could walk, it would walk like Groucho.
The flawed fruit drops and smears,
melting from yellow to brown
as it lies in the tangled lawn,
making a wasp-stung dizzy smell
where burnt-out stalks of lupine
lean against goatsbeard and teasel.
Like grains of light added to a scale,
first one goldfinch hops down,
then another and another, as
they pick seeds from the pomace,
kicking the beam imperceptibly
toward the end of August,
then vanish before the eye
only to reappear gradually
as a smattering of gold dust
or small blizzard of yellow
in the twisted trunk’s shadow,
to move and freeze and look,
in their illusive math: nor
in memory will they forsake
this poor pelting house of cedar shake,
but even miles distant and months later
still gorge on the deliquescent hoard,
each delicate-wristed bird.