In our backyard there lives a short, broad tree, unfurling
each April into vibrant green, then blooming and blazing: 

rich red in summer, pink and orange then rust to light brown 
every single fall. Often in winter fat snowflakes arrive so

slowly and land so gently, they coat each limb like down. 
Perhaps I’m too content to love our tree as just our tree 

to commit to remembering, perhaps I am drawn to other things 
or so adrift I tend to forget, because once a year or so it seems, 

I find I ask What’s that tree called again, the one in our backyard? 
Always her answer comes, always soft like raindrops rolling off 

the leaves of trees in the wake of an autumn storm. But still, 
loving our tree for so many days, so many years, one would think 

I could commit its kind to memory. And someday I will, but 
right now, every morning when the sun comes up, I visit.

I can tell its brown buds have enlarged a bit more; soon
they will open, then some wrens and cardinals will call.