Appletime

In the little world of the grasses the butterflies
Flitter blue and brown and white, from hawkbit
Sulphur-yellow above the bleached seed-heads
And the shockheaded, fluffy thistles,
To the hard brown clubs of plantain and clover.
It is August, and the busy insect life
Continues, one eye on the sun’s clock that urges
Autumn is coming. Bees and wasps are in motion,
Small but constant, like the nodding grasses in the sun.

Waist-deep in the grass stand the apple trees,
Full of reddening fruit, their leaves a touch yellower
Than yesterday. So the great clock of the heavens
Wheels silently, as the apples in their hundreds
Ripen, and the unseen pips turn brown and ready.
How many apple trees are hanging here
In potentia from the lichened boughs?
Future forests, future summer days
With ripening fruit and butterflies.
Only God knows which will ever come to be.
In the mind of God are held safe all the forests,
All the apples of all worlds that ever were or could be,
And every golden apple’s a solid earnest of eternity.
Crunch, and know yourself deathless and beloved.

 

tRuth 2017

image copyright tRuth http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/