Poems by Angela Townsend

Arboretums

by Angela Townsend

From Canary Summer 2024

Angela lives where the Neshaminy Creek befriends the Tohickon and red maples can't contain their enthusiasm.

Once you have taken refuge, you remain a citizen of the trees. There is an international agreement, signed by saplings as lean as cheese sticks and pillars no arms can circle. I was unaware of protocol when I parked my car on the first Sunday. My tailbone was too bony for the pew, but it was April, which is holy.

I had passed the Hunterdon County Arboretum for years, driving too fast to hear its air. It appeared to be a lethargic brown building ringed with portable toilets. A single oak leaned in sympathy, its branches dusting the roof: “There, there.”

A milestone birthday hung humid, and my earth grew soft. Wind somersaulted canyons I did not know I contained. My mother suggested I try online dating. I bought a magenta selfie stick and drove to the arboretum.

Trees have mercy on the mercenary. They knew I let succulents die rather than risk soiled knuckles. I offered no cover for my mission. I was here to flatter my face, shoplifting sunlight. I had flat-ironed my bangs and inserted red earrings. I took one picture and made discoveries. I never knew that my chin is rutty as a peach pit, and my eyes implode when I smile.

I took a picture of my upturned hands. I zoomed in on fingertips and saw spiral galaxies. I turned the camera in a better direction and entered the arboretum.

I could not identify species. Trees do not give entrance exams. My whorls had never felt so famished for touch. I was grabby, feeling the fast break. The oatmeal tree had bumps like overdue poems. The kitten tree let me grasp it like a baton. Oaks oversaw a congress where every vote was unanimous.

Everything green gives grace to the suburban tame. Trees breathe liturgy into lungs profaned by air conditioning. A child’s hand had engraved “Wizard Walk” on a slab. I slipped out of my ballet flats out of respect for the clover. I was learning. I soaked my knee-high stockings and found yellow flowers the size of mini muffins. I apologized to the yellow flowers for comparing them to mini muffins.

Apologies are not accepted in the arboretum. You are asked only to remember. I forgot the Chevrolets on the bypass and the tiny boxes of men on the dating site. There was no one else at the arboretum, even though it was April. I awarded oaks with hugs I once learned from my Sicilian grandmother. Lichens told me naughty jokes. I wondered if selfie sticks are recyclable.

I returned, returned, and returned. I had found three safe acres under heaven. I downloaded an app to identify my patrons. I still called them by the names they’d told me, Celestine and Andromeda and DJ Pimento. But now I knew what the moonlight called them, Acer negundo and Acer rubrum and Pinus strobus. I could tell my begonia from my portulaca. When I got home, I could tell my cheeks and chin were changing for the pinker.

The children in the arboretum allow you to call them “mine,” as long as you do not forget that you have become theirs. Belonging is nonrefundable and irrevocable.

Belonging persists, even if you crawl into one of the boxes with one of the men and change states. Nothing green can hurry, but I did. I squinted until I convinced myself I saw a wizard. My eyes disappeared whether or not I smiled.

We both knew we had razed the garden. We believed X marked the spot, and we tore the earth like cannibals. The chest was empty.

My heart was still beating. There was an arboretum on the edge of our new city. It was a king-sized quilt in comparison to Hunterdon’s calico patch. We entered in November, and the man beat his chest, hurly-burly down the rope bridge. November was his birth month, he repeated. He was born in this city. This was his.

The trees were large. The man ran up the katsura like a guerrilla up a wall. I laid my hand upon its solar plexus and learned its name. We walked through improbable roses, porcelain faces set by saints unseen. The man yelled “mine” in tooth and claw, but a ladybug landed in my palm. “There, there.” I told her my name was Artemis.

I let him run, a silverback of the suburbs, until I saw him no more. We would reconvene in the car, climate controlled.

The leaves were the color of an old man’s butterscotch candy, and they giggled at the comparison. I turned my camera back and saw myself gold in their arms. My chin dripped with peach nectar. Everything green is irrevocable.