Crabs and Pines
Written by Wendy BooydeGraaff
Posted in Poetry
Art by Rachel Coyne
When we moved here, the crab
tree flowered like a sculpted ball
on a stick, and the contorted pine
seemed straight out of Horton-ville.
We have pruners; we don’t use
them much. Fourteen years,
and the crab pokes at the sun
porch roof, autumn star clematis
winds through her branches,
the contorted pine bends
his back, thrusts his arms into the crab
canopy, peering through the foliage
like a professor, searching for tree
frogs who begin chirping at dusk.