Wilding Orchards
by Dante Di Stefano

When you have grown up, after the scattered seeds
of discarded apples have burrowed into
the dirt your father blessed with his hoping,
when all allegiance to core and stem
has drifted with the wind over the ridge
to the west and your mother still stokes flames
in the wood stove that warmed the smallest rooms
of your dollhouses, after the horses
you dreamed of taming have stabled themselves,
and the princesses have swapped their ball gowns
for housecoats, after the big pawed golden
dog that nuzzled you has ghosted the pines,
remember the timber that choirs you now
with such warmth and say the names: Harrison,
a yellow planet pocked with marks that map
a cosmos; Bedan, greenish beacon lit
on the edge of an open windowsill;
Domaines, the blush of bittersweet first love;
Golden Russet, a blaze of hooves thundered
on the anvil of a drooping bough;
Dabinett, red as flag stripe on the fourth
of July, rosy as your own cheeks when
the snowflakes fall; Muscadet de Dieppe,
the color of photographs from before
you were born; Hewes Virginia Crab, claw
of sunshine that talons through history;
Ashmead's Kernel, birdsong forged into fruit;
Stoke Red, bittersharp, the way that one word
will spin you back to the only word: home.  

Dante Di Stefano's poetry and essays have appeared recently in The Writer's Chronicle, Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, Shenandoah, Brilliant Corners, The Southern California Review and elsewhere. He was the winner of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, The Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, The Phyllis Smart-Young Prize in Poetry, The Bea Gonzalez Prize in Poetry, and an Academy of American Poets College Prize. He currently serves as a poetry editor for Harpur Palate.