Not the usual thing. I’ve been thinking and reading about memory a lot lately, and sometimes writing mediocre poetry helps me think through things.
In mountain orchards, Brevard, North Carolina, late winter, guards packing shears and pruners and loppers and other sharp objects inspect rows and columns, keeping the residents in line— there’s no touching or raising hands. Well disciplined, they wear name tags correctly: Cameo, Cortland, Crimson Crisp, all the way to Winesap. But in autumn, guards blinded behind swells of children poured out from white school buses, residents express themselves, chucking apples red, yellow, green, left and right, faster than anybody can clean it up. Feral children join the food fight, skidding through mud, grass, red leaves; bees cruise through the chaos, looting before rakes and tractors and white school buses sweep it away. Come moonlight, some debris had been too squishy for raking, melting into earth, secretly dropping a seed, which burrows, and makes a memory.