Lifeline Poetry | Life

Emigration Creek

stories left behind

I once lived in an apricot orchard. I could follow a meandering path bordered by a stone wall decorated with broken pottery.

Someone telling their colorful story filled with suns of lemon yellow shards, flowers of chipped blue ceramic, bright red buds of shattered crockery.

I would find my cottage squat beside a raucous creek carving the soft land. Emigration Creek, carried the tale of apricot trees planted, left behind, in the dappled shade with whispering ghosts and their fruit, a gift sweet upon the tongue.

Inspired by recent travels and ruminations on emigration, genealogy, and diaspora. Prompted by the poem “Shake Orchard” by Mark Doty, I thought of when I lived in a cottage on Emigration Creek and passed daily through a left-behind apricot orchard. A stone wall and sweet abandoned fruit brought to mind stories left behind.

Thank you Sahil Patel for Lifeline and a place for poems of life and love.

You can find another story of language as a connection to ancestors and “home” here: