Apple Orchard in Blossom

Left work early to go with Jo to a consultation with an oral surgeon. Looks like those wisdom teeth will have to go.

On the way back we took a detour to the apple orchard where we have gone apple picking for many years. We spread out to take photos and agreed the scene was pretty and the cool breeze in the shade was the perfect temperature.


Well into its life this spring
the apple tree divides into the half
that could pass as driftwood 
and the blossoming half
whose wide, impulsive white
parachutes above the grass.

The flowers hold an apple in their future,
red or green, a certainty to aim for
amid the perfumed distractions.
At the back door, a woodpecker 
insists on its meal.

The petals pass through the gate
of darkness, fall far from the tree.
The parent calls out, "I'm right here."
The child thinks, "Nowhere to be seen."

Bent as if to search for echoes
in the ground-flowering,
the hollow branches case 
narrow and narrower shadows.

When I walk by with my small daughter
she will not let our bodies touch
or "We'll look like two sides of one thing
instead of two things."


Apple Tree, by Erica Funkhouser