THE YEAR THE APPLES FELL

That was the year the apples fell into my bag no matter what I did. I would bump up against a limb and they’d shake loose, roll down my brown-sweatered arm, glance off my shoulder and into the turquoise canvas. The bag filled, and filled.

The year before–most years– those loosened apples hit the ground and I left them to wasps, mice, possums, the foraging deer. Some of those years–the one my sister died, or the one my folks left the old house for the condo and we salvaged perennials from my mother’s garden and tried not to cry–it seemed all the apples were wasted like that, every last one. But this year, for a change, something different.

I stood under each tree looking up, bemused, as one by one the globules fell red and ready, like blessings, like easy autumn dreams.