A Poem about death and time and an orchard because those are the only real subjects

After a lunch of black grapes and cheese

The rains came

And chased the party into the house

In the clatter of dishes and raising of coats,

I slip away, through the holly and hedges

Down the stone path toward the apple orchard. 

I push aside the gate,

stone arch crumbled, lying amongst the

thistles and dried grass.

When I was a child,

we used to pick apples here, pink and crisp.

The hill is different now that they've gone,

trees untended, heavy with fruit and 

blackening cores, rotting at the base.

And yet, as I pick my way between them,

bees sifting the grass,

I think of years gone,

of light threading through the silvery boughs

when I'd run down the hill side to 

lick the neck of a girl, 

salty, sweet, intoxicating. 

The girl, now gone, 

countries away. 

I walked over stone and grass today

to find that lost summer of youth.

My feet treading clover and

buttercups, bent like  Claudel's statues

by the press of wind. 

Pebbles of rain

slide down my chin and onto my throat.

The rain slackens, and I hear the voices

of the party coming back to me.

I tread round the husks of apples

and pass the thin webs strung between the trees, 

 silver in silvery light,

husks of flies, spinning round. 

And I hear the sound

of time licking at my heels,

reminding me that one day,

these fields too will be gone,

land flattened by the seas.

And of me and those I have known

there will be nothing but matter, indistinct.

Up the hill, I hear the voices. 

And I reach out and hold onto one of them

 like it is a silver rope of light, 

and I wait for it to carry me home.