When we took out the cherry tree
that had died from too much rain
the
branches smelled foreign,
the sweet cherry odor gone.
Death has a peculiar smell; if it were
a color, I would call it
brown,
what the snapped limbs looked like.
Everything brittle
Except the outside bark
which looks remarkably as it did
all the
years it was growing.
But never a cherry
from its flowering. Replaced
I chose an apricot.
something sunset
color,
something that looked possible.
Adrianne Marcus' chapbook The Resurrection of Trotsky was published by dancing girl press in 2004.