I have noticed John, my neighbour’s apples

Bobbing on the branches in the wind; grown suddenly heavy

And tinted rouge, in a green vista down his orchard,

Across the garden, outside my window.

 

Their leaves, these apple-trees,

Now crisping sere with morning frost,

Conspired all summer; transformed showers to juice

Pips, stalks and sucrose, and there they are, now,

A crop of apples, sudden, in these mornings,

With the rooks caw-cawing and wheeling about,

In winds that weave and wave the boughs that bore them.

 

The squirrels, prancing, hesitant,

With their bright, black-bead eyes;

I have noticed these also,

Busy along the pathways of their purposes

Fired by a diminishing sun.

 

And I have noticed the last bees of summer

Have left our chimney, fearful of woodsmoke

From fallen twigs my wife burnt to warm the grate

Ready for winter: what did they know, that I didn’t?

What other glaring signals have I missed?

 

They were never our bees anyway, to begin with

But borrowed for a summer, someone else’s,

Like John’s last apples that he never harvests,

My neighbour, but leaves on, for the squirrels and the birds.

 

It has been brought to my attention,

By my ticking off appointments on the almanac

My printers sent last Christmas,

This balancing of daylight and of dark;

Something is happening that requires my preparation,

Something to do with apples turning

Like planets, now green, now red.

 

Yes, it is that time again, to allow due accord,

To note a passing and a rounding,

To gather in, to reinforce, to store,

And to accept.

 

Or maybe what is required of me is to do nothing - 

The dark passes the quicker by not flailing against it;

The squirrels have their tasks, the birds make plans,

The bees were never mine, and there may be

A new almanac next year, with its moons and apples.

 

Always leave the last few on the tree, John,

To see us through the winter.

 

Autumn Equinox 2011