-This poem reflects on windfall apples at the beginning of autumn, where harvest, loss, and the orchard’s unseen visitors share the sweetness gathered through summer.
The orchard keeps a warmer light,
though evening settles through the rows,
and apples gather in the grass,
small lanterns fallen from the leaves.
Some carry scars of beak and rain,
some open where the wasps descend,
but each has drawn through patient months
the sweetness summer leaves behind.
By morning, deer have crossed the rows,
their narrow prints dark in the dew,
while bees move through the broken skins,
and windfall perfumes all the grass.
At dusk, we fill a wooden pail,
the apples knock from hand to hand,
and under branches growing bare,
one more falls softly in the dark.