2. The Pineapple Trees

In autumn, pineapples fall in the woods

with soft thuds where the dying leaves lay among the needles,

dressed in red and gold to hide their bare bones.

I used to run home at dusk with one in each hand,

grasping at crocodile leaves that had shrunk and changed

by the time I held them before my mother.

My sister is taller than me and sometimes she picks them

too early, and their petal lips flake and fall away;

we take down the summer bunting and spit bitter flesh

(wooden instead of yellow) into the grass, a quarter

-ring is hidden inside for a shortened season.

She’d try to explain how pinecones are different

by putting their corpses near the fire, so they’d open up

and allow their souls to fill with the rain

that patters down our chimney.

Pineapples don’t grow on trees, she told me.

In the October quiet, the leaves fall slower,

revealing their transparency as they melt

into each other: blood and tanned skin,

hanging (barely) in the treetops, a memory of songs

blistering on the threshing floors.

I sit beneath a wintering tree and watch the pineapples

falldecayanddisappear, nature recycling in a second.

My summer dress is stained and sticky with juice

and an empty shell rests in my lap.
Could be a skull or a mask,

in time. Through the branches I see scales falling

in place of leaves, like fruit dragons

shedding their skins.