Pick Your Own

i needed a beat. so

the family orchard on a warm october saturday

i forget what my problem is.

inside, nancy has been working in oils, while

outside, bees swarm, confused by feels-like summer.

dappled is a funny word, but apt

for this life not solid grim, but glimmered light through a veil of willful forgetting.

we talk, my cousins, my sister, me; of parents

now dead, more affection than longing. also the world is on fire.

from so much salt water and smoke,

explain this honey.