Photograph by Camille Fortin

Michelle Deines has poetry published Zygote Magazine and Jones Ave., and forthcoming in The Malahat Review. She is a teacher, writer, painter and actor, and lives in Vancouver. She is originally from Shawnigan Lake, Vancouver Island.

Monday's Poem

© Michelle Deines

The Apple Tree

My friend says
she must cut the tree down.
Apple.

No more spring blossoms.
No more green globes to burden old branches.
No more fallen fruit, red on the green lawn.
No more smells of fresh pastry, cinnamon, and baked apples.

I imagine her now,
packing the possessions she will take to Africa.
She knows the tree will not be there
when she returns home.
I imagine she pauses,
leaves the travel guides and the to-do lists
to gaze through her cold window
to the tree she has known all her years in this house.
Perhaps she spreads her fingers on the glass,
covers her view of the tree.
Then she takes her hand away,
watches the moist outline of her palm
on the glass slowly
disappear.