Apple Picking Time in Leominster.

Apples loaded every bough,
I could never pick them all myself.
McIntosh, Red Delicious, Macoun,
the best were out of reach.
Even a careful leap
was sure to bring a shower down.
Newton could hardly have been missed
in the carpeted circle underneath.
I buffed a Mac bright red against my jeans
and savored the crisp crunch between my teeth.
A misstep brought an even sweeter smell
of earlier drops ready for the cider heap.
Hesperides' apples fill these trees,
yet no one else is here.
Gone the narrow-pointed ladders,
the stacks of bushel boxes,
the horse-drawn cider wagon,
retired insurance man with big cigar,
Fitzgerald's tam-o'-shanter,
Johnny Chapman's house,
grandma's applesauce,
the accents, weathered skin, and slept-in clothes
of itinerant Quebecois.
Sacre-Bleu! Gone!
A solitary crow calls out,
you'll not get a second chance.
I rush to fill my baskets full,
using cool morning to get set for colder night.
Fast sailing cumuli modulate the azure sky and warming light.
The sun transfigures first a distant pasture, then me,
then a genuflecting apple tree.


© Sherman K. Poultney 9 October 1989