POETRY

Bud Break

By Benjamin S. Grossberg     VOLUME 55 No. 3 & 4

Vertical Divider

It is this moment, this one. The buds
along each branch opening lime green
against bark that’s still winter tawny,
and at the ends of each branch,
the fatter fruiting buds, each a green
match head in slow-motion flare.

The trees are, in this moment, perfect.
The potential of an ideal year--
of leaves pushing out and out without
any rusts or spots, blights or scabs,
without the caterpillar or beetle bites
that will accrue before
I notice and pick insects off
until they finally become too thick,
and I must spray the trees down.
Before leaves enlarge and darken
and emerging apples draw deer
to munch the tender ends of branches
before realizing that these trees
(Liquid Fence) are no good to eat--
before all the things that will make this year
this year.

Does a mother love the child fresh laid in her arms
more than later, decades on—if she lives
long enough, or, say, looking back
from some after place--
when she can see all its occlusions:
the sagging flesh, the way indulgences
have shaped him, or, perhaps worse,
the ratchet-tight smile
of a too forcefully imposed rigor?
Would my mother love me more now?
Could you, mother? If you could see all
the facets of my life, my petty, parochial heart—
the indulgences at easy reach, the failures?
But if not, could you ever have loved me at all?
Was there ever a person other than this to be loved?

I will do better. If the Honey Crisps—which are
like cats ready to run under a chair at a footfall—
are again shocked into early dormancy,
I will do better.

If the Fujis are again measled over with frogeye spot--

if cedar rust sweeps through the Pink Ladies,
causing, by late August, hairy moles to blot their cheeks
(the hairs are mold spores),
I will do better. I’ll love the world—

and the people around me, and myself—

even as they are.

And yet, how to consider the trees now, each
with its firelights of green, and not
feel, not privilege uncomplicated love?



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TO READ MORE POETRY, PICK UP A COPY OF VOL 55 No. 3&4



BENJAMIN S. GROSSBERG is the Director of Creative Writing at the University of Hartford. His books include My Husband Would (University of Tampa, 2020), a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year and winner of the 2021 Connecticut Book Award; and Sweet Cord Orchard (University of Tampa, 2009), winner of the 2008 Tampa Review Prize and a Lambda Literary Award.


VOLUME 55 No. 3 & 4