An American sentence acrostic after Lucille Clifton

In rooting the tree, I planted the seeds of disease.
One key lime shed blooms, coiled its leaves, spent a brittle
week or two brooming the sky clean of clouds.

I grieved for the wood that had to be taken against its living
will. It couldn’t remain, not even as a scaffold to re-
emerge as a refuge for owlets to grip with their zygodactyl 

feet. The pollinators would still land there, then vector,
first to the Meyer lemon, after to the pink grapefruit and
into the backyard where I have secreted the Thai lime,

their calculus of legs, mouthparts, and bodies depositing
temporary pathogens. Microscopic death blows. For the future
joy of rising citric suns, for love, I summon its opposite.