Apple Tree (2025)

Apple Tree

Music & Lyrics by Rachel Garcia & Thu Tran

I’m watching you weeding
Your arms disappearing
Into Geranium, then salvia
Eyes in soft focus, seeing
With only your hands fingers seizing
‘Round the right wrong thing

Distant voices of children
Scrape of chalk on the pavement
Dogs in the yard howling
At mail in the slot falling 
Through the fence we are holding
The city up ‘gainst our backs

Here, wind chime and bird song
Marcy calling through the fence
Toes in loam, the squish and the press
The guttural sigh of the earth as you feel a little give

Nobody knows about you and me
Under the gaze of the apple tree
Taste of a fruit so bittersweet
You never disappointed me
You never disappointed me

Conversing with angel’s trumpet
Consorting with clover and ragweed 
Telling the dirt your immaculate plans

This joyful cleaning
I do not see what you’re seeing
A lifetime of wisdom from culling 
Knowing the shape and the feeling
By heart, by years, whole seasons
Kneeling in dutiful prayer

Oh I was cast from the garden
Pulled up like crab grass choking the sage
Pinched by the root and twisted 
Make a little space

Who will remember you and me
Save for the gaze of the apple tree?
Taste of a fruit so bittersweet
You never disappointed me
You never disappointed me
You never disappointed me
You never disappointed me

Refuge

Music & Lyrics by Rachel Garcia & Thu Tran

Let me take your honest face
Cradled in my hands
My hands
My hands
My hands

Grey whale surfacing
Surfacing, she lifts
Her love
To taste
The briny air

Tell me where it hurts, dear one
Refuge in joy
In joy
My hands
Your face
My hands
Your hands
The moon
Your house
The winding road
My hands
Your face
The briny air