Letting It Get to You

Letting It Get to You

The clearing could have been an orchard,
this fence could be a road. Standing along it,

the people who didn’t own what was not
the orchard, that clearing belonging to no one.

Maybe a family for the orchard, girl wanting
out ever since she was small, climber of trees

in the orchard, a few apples falling each time
she jumped down, small shadows thudding

behind her heels, an echo. There she is, running
along the road, her house just beyond those

trees if trees would have grown here. Sometimes,
the clearing is the orchard. You can see one

shimmer in the other, can smell the apples,
the orchard is getting braver, showing itself

for seconds at a time, waiting for a woman
who feels she certain she has been here before.