Lime Tree in Michigan W e n d y
B o o y d e G r a a f f
January snow falls wet onto grass still green. I’ve always wanted to live in a warmer climate. Michigan’s fate is semi-tropical in thirty, forty years. The lime tree spindles in my kitchen, its leaves are gone, and one juicy lime hangs from a flexible branch. The ball drops lower, lower. Once I pluck it, will it be the end? White mold creeps up the half-inch trunk. Just a stem, really. I spray the speckles with soapy water laced with cayenne. These purple hours of in between—it could go either way. Night or day? Life or death? Warm or cold? I pull sleep like threads from an old sweater. Out side the dark sparkles with cold flakes and I breathe in the front yard’s maple promise which I take to mean I have a future though the trees only watch out for themselves. And can you blame them? Come spring, the chainsaws march up and down the streets, replace branches with air and hundred-year trunks with grass.
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