The Death of the Apple Tree...

...was not a thing foretold.

It had no predicate in augury or suspicion.

The slow demise that sudden sprung

Caught my sight and breath

The apple tree undone, severed  by a pale wisp of wind.

[I call the Apple he and she
to honor the latent memory
legend, belief, and mystery -
He and She  the human journey
began in Eden with a tree]

He and she had grown old and weak, for so long

Was old and strong…what went wrong?

Why did the lichen covered trunk suddenly

Bend the green grass?

Leaves withered over half. Dry twigs for supple branches

She once wore robin’s nests in her hair, now so bare

And the fruits...tiny and forgiving

food for squirrels and flowers for bees.

The death of the Apple tree on the corner

At the juncture of Oak and winding streets with forgettable names

There in the soft gaze of a drooping fir, 

and not so far from the old Sycamore.

 The old apple fell; a mere block away, the nearest apple tree, bent low

like an old weeping woman, seems in peril too.

Why should this gnarled and broken tree

Speak any consequence to me.

On an urban island, its tragedy

Confined to casual passersby.

I see the core gone empty

where once was heartwood, sturdy

Life water left rings of age and purity.

Was it the early swelling of its nodes

when her white blankets  unfold

and earth would soon lift her chin’

And tend to my delight the slow  bend

From frigid air to buzzing bees.

Perhaps the flash of deepest red and early

blossoms so fragile that we dread flurry

from gusts, or rain in windy pelting

No, I think it is the time;  I am blessed to see

Many things at beauty’s end, simply…and so many

 

The death of the apple tree ripples news, as cars pause to note

The change from yesterday and the scores of years before

As he and she rose from sapling to be the throne

of red top cardinal and vibrant Blue Jay

Now. A solitary Pecker sights the culprits beneath the tired old skin

Rap-a-tap gobble down too late

For the Apple tree is gone- and the roots

Crackle and sigh in the night for the sun

Can only whisper now…of glory days  and sweet fruit.