Overture Or Ordure Does An Orchard Make From Stone Poem by Warren Falcon

Overture

or Ordure

does an orchard make
from stone (peach)

tomatoes reborn stray
between rows and roses
wilding in heaped woods
yard-once'd,

plankt-ruins' old stead
close beside a wagon trail,
barely road/not road, avails
centuries shovel-preserved,
rough-used,

of scarp rock, mud mortar,

aviled red seamed redundancy

over worked - bruised



hoof, foot, wheel

splay where rose

thoughts' flowers

not stray—


remains a

feminine

pause,


a braid of
purple shade,

rough pines,
and poplar,

one fruit tree still daring.


**
'The first roads in Greenville, South Carolina were the trails that Cherokees [Indigenous Turtle Island people from whom the land was stolen] made along the ridges above rivers and streams.'
—from Greenville News article about wagon roads made to transport good and to connect towns and cities. Such roads were (there are traces of them still) up and down the East coast, inland and beside Atlantic coastal trails.