Given Wind (A Meditation on Time)

[In which time + wind makes apples fall]

A month passes. More. The wind, and we, rattle the branches, and the apples fall. At dusk the yard is full of deer grazing between the trees. In the morning, the apples are gone.

We shake down more. Crows come, poke holes in the greenest ones, carry away the smallest orbs.

A storm passes over us, and then another. Rain pelts the trees; the wind shakes down more fruit; the deer come, then go.

Early November.  One last apple clings to the tree: out of reach, stubborn, rotten.