Although my niece, Shelby, wasn’t part of our family until she was eight, and my older girls were seven, I have been thinking — obsessively — about when they were all younger, and I thought I would share this poem. It was part of a collection (now abandoned) that I called Unbridled. I was experimenting with not using punctuation.

the orchard

My older daughters were five that summer
playing at their grandmother’s my mother’s
with their cousins my nephew Tucker
and Hailee my cousin’s grandchild
my family with its layers of generations
I went outside to check on them
and found all four lying in the grass
eyes closed and their hands folded
I said what are you doing
and my twins who had an agreement
then never to tell on each other said nothing
but Hailee in a flat scary voice said we’re dead
I looked to the kitchen window
wondering which grandmother stood there
my mother or my cousin each with her
history of loss that is not a good game I said
and the children stood up looking relieved
the cherries were on and I held down a branch
I let them pick as long as they wanted
their innocence so ripe I could smell it
on the wet pits they spit into the grass.

first published in Pontoon: An Anthology of Washington State Poets, No. 10 (2007)