Letter From Town: The Almond Tree

YOU promised to send me some violets. Did you forget? / White ones and blue ones from under the orchard hedge? / Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a pledge / Of our early love that hardly has opened yet.

Here there's an almond tree--you have never seen / Such a one in the north--it flowers on the street, and I stand / Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers that expand / At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean.

Under the almond tree, the happy lands / Provence, Japan, and Italy repose, / And passing feet are chatter and clapping of those / Who play around us, country girls clapping their hands.

You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown, / All your unbearable tenderness, you with the laughter / Startled upon your eyes now so wide with hereafter, / You with loose hands of abandonment hanging / down.