The fruit that never was

Orchards once stretched
for miles
here;
my mother would hide in the trees
as a young girl
and smoke secret
cigarettes.

The most fertile land
on earth
now yields
only fertile
minds
and sterile suburbs.

I yearn for the fruit
that never was;
a million more apples
would have better served the world
than the million parking spaces
that were the fruits
of our plastic labors.

The secret history of Apple
is buried in the nitrogen of the soil it
sits upon
and in slums half the world away.

My mother must have known that.
Surely she did.
Rows of trees replaced
by rows of storage units.
I’m sure she noticed.

The larger parcels of land
left with orchards
were last to go, and the
newly-crowned
high-tech kings
sneered
with envy as they tore beauty
down
and raised up the chip and
A.I.
in drab office buildings.

The secret histories of cigarettes and silicon.
And my mom climbed
down the tree. Surely she did.

I would have stayed,
San José,
if you had only told them
no.

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