When I was four
God summoned me;
I refused to answer.
He screamed angrily down at me
between the claps of a thunderbolt.
His sentences short and to the point.
“Speak!”
The apple tree in the front yard
translated it.
The first word I spoke.
“Snake.”
“Black snake.”
Repeatedly,
until no one wanted to hear it anymore.
The apple tree died for that word;
split in halves, forming a heart.
The city came,
cut it down into logs,
and threw ‘em in a loud obnoxious box
towed behind the truck.
The apple tree was shredded
spit out on the other side
into the back of the truck
as wood shavings.
Sap dripped from the cracks of the box.
The air was scented with Granny Smith.
In the end
the only witness to god coming down at all
laid, cut up into little insignificant pieces
in the back of a truck
to be dumped in a landfill.
Smyon-Pa 