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Poetry

From The Parables of Mary Magdalene

It is like a single cherry tree, surrounded with fences and growing in an orchard of cherry trees.

The fruit of the one tree is no redder or less red than the other trees’ fruit. Where its bark has cracked, sap oozes out, forming amber beads that harden in place, mid-drip. In this it is like the other trees.

The separate tree’s dusty leaves hang listless and bent, as do the leaves on the unfenced trees. All the cherries glow with late sun like jelly already put up in the jar.

Under the round shade of the fenced-in cherry, tall grass bleaches to hay, uncut and untrampled.

Come quick little foxes. Magpies come quick.

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