The sun beneath an apple-tree
The fragrances of the mind bathe in the calm intensity of a summer sun’s kisses. A maze of tunnelled highways starched clean of their gloom and griminess and windowless tears. As a blaze of golden yellows serenely unpick ancient locks on winter darkened doors, grinning and giggling as they go.
“ Hush, now, ‘tis summer “ they seem to smile at any scalding thoughts desperate to remain hidden or to cower in the wilderness.
The branches of the apple-tree bend and sway with the weight of pregnant apples. It is not a day for the vulnerabilities of love or loss but of the possibilities of birth. Some pause to graciously accept the natural charge of the sunlight on worn-out bones and for the strength of the love in the sun’s radiance. There must be strength in love too. A hardy bunch of growing apples, told me so.
Soon, quietness and light illuminate the hallways. The fragrances of the mind now a fresh, earthy cologne. Every door hangs open.
Bar one.
The last revealed only when all else is balmed in stillness.
Idly, I pick some stray un-ripened apples from the nearest branch and pray my soul will nourish them. I rap my knuckles on the timbered portal. Awkwardly and out of practice. Nervous too.
Inside, he is sitting and waiting patiently. Smiling and delighted to see me.
And eating a juicy apple from the branch above my head.
Lovely post Gerry. Evokes memories of Halcyon days of late summer in the 60s Mayo. Back to school, Indian summers, robbing orchards, barbed wire scrapes, sometimes getting caught, threatened with Letterfrack etc
and the bite of the apple - as described by Thomas Flanagan in his historical novel The Year of the French - "like the juices of summer bursting all over his mouth"
This morning my list had an item for Granny Smiths, but alas I had to make do with Pink Ladys
Beautiful Gerry !
The apple's soul is not the skin,
But those who plant and tend within.