Five Poems

Pear tree, apple tree, green glass tree

It is midafternoon and we haven't gone far.
Ahead of me his hand
pulls back the pear-tree branch.
I duck under and, briefly, a golden pear lies
against my hair, heavy as a chant
in a foreign language. I turn

as though in church again, as though I turned
towards a far
light, a nonsensical chant,
tremendous, opaque, cupping hands.
As though I could lie
along the length of this green branch -

faith. But in that branching
maze I have stumbled every turn.
So I follow the land's lay
...