Wonder if he’s still farming
the wind, the weathers,
the feathers & petals,
cold fragile harvest
of marginal land.
Some year the mountain’s frost took it all,
some years the birds & the bugs,
(it happens, he said)
but in a season of different fortune
he piled the apples high in gleaming hills
of yellow & reds on a bed of flowing periwinkle.
You might see him up in
the towering Ben Davis, fruit-laden giant,
or down hauling the ladder
through a tangle of vines & flowers,
October light a mellow fire of far-off warmth.
Seemed to live on air & apples,
apples three times a day
(never get tired of them you want one?)
He was the arms & legs of the orchard,
the part that could see & know,
and the trees he tended
grow old under the snows
sinking roots that remember his name.
— Suzanne Freeman
