Apples in Orchards

Apples in orchards falling through afternoons through years

Of autumn burning slowly in blue fires

And laying down leafmold as the sea fathers silt

To shape a bank from sand and the parings of seashells

That once held to the ear carried a dirge for wrecks

Apples in orchards have ripened with the walls through years.

Branches above me lying across the sun this noon

Of summer when the coastline parches down

To the sea's lip of laughing foam

Steal half the sunlight from the garden

Rob the summer and recall a month of tears

Branches that wave across the sun this afternoon.

Wind weaving inseparable from pale sunlight in winter

Winding frost grains on a bony-columned porch

That gleams across the vistas of the park that's lost

All limit of space as méadows do in snow

That pads the air and enlarges the small creaks of sound

Wind knits an edge to sunlight in the winter.

Apples in orchards falling through afternoons through years

Of branches lying across the sun as in this noon

Where wind weaves in the wavering sunlight

As in the hawthorn days of spring

And through the winter with a hollowing sound

Apples in orchards fall down years.