Mary Buchinger
Grafting
When I look down the rows of tiny peach trees,
six thousand slender saplings, and then back
to my pile of multicolored strips we’d scissored
from plastic bags, and the tender bud stems
wrapped in damp towels, I do not think immediately
of how this happens to me. I score the bark
to expose an oval of white woody flesh ringed
with brilliant green, knife a fresh clean gouge
from a four-inch bud branch, and smush together
the two patches like a sloppy kiss. The slashed
sap lines wrapped with thin bands against rain
and rot, held in place for the exchange of nourishment,
for the bolstering of the other, each for each,
for something greater, say an orchard—part
of a mountainside held in place against gravity,
drought, downpours, and poverty—or, just a single
hardy tree in a yard, a tree bearing edible fruit.
Grafting
When I look down the rows of tiny peach trees,
six thousand slender saplings, and then back
to my pile of multicolored strips we’d scissored
from plastic bags, and the tender bud stems
wrapped in damp towels, I do not think immediately
of how this happens to me. I score the bark
to expose an oval of white woody flesh ringed
with brilliant green, knife a fresh clean gouge
from a four-inch bud branch, and smush together
the two patches like a sloppy kiss. The slashed
sap lines wrapped with thin bands against rain
and rot, held in place for the exchange of nourishment,
for the bolstering of the other, each for each,
for something greater, say an orchard—part
of a mountainside held in place against gravity,
drought, downpours, and poverty—or, just a single
hardy tree in a yard, a tree bearing edible fruit.
Mary Buchinger is the author of Aerialist (Gold Wake, 2015) and Roomful of Sparrows, (Finishing Line, 2008). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Nimrod, Salamander, The Cortland Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She is Associate Professor of English and Communication Studies at MCPHS University in Boston, Massachusetts.