by Five Sisters

Created on: December 28, 2009

     They piled up high under a tree much too short to climb, its branches fearful of ever reaching heights merely extended out.  Disfigured now, from bug and beast, the fruit lay discarded and waiting for nothing – and everything. 

     The same cache in years past, stellar it was, won abundant accolades and ribbons from congested county fairs and harvest festivals.  Perfect combinations of tartness and sweet bounced around happily on many a lucky fair goers tongue.  But the fruit of the past was no longer hip to the current taste of the time, thus was shelved for more enterprising varieties from foreign and quixotic locations and finally abandoned altogether as a whole.

     If fruit could be offended, this would have been the perfect time to wear the feeling out and flop around in it for awhile before returning to the quiet of dull, null and nothing.  But just as the apples did not roll around in a celebration of kudos and great taste years prior, neither did they pout with emotion or carry any feelings of desertion now.

     The orchard itself held true beauty if one did not look too closely.  Finding the decomposition delighting in the defeat was easy to do if the superficial cover was hastily punctured.  But visitors were few and far between and always on their way to some place else if they did happen to pass by, so the secret to the façade was safe.

     Life was abundant under the knuckled back branches.  Both fluffy and grotesque basked in the tree's sweet spoil minding only the business that was theirs to mind.  Beast and fowl gravitated toward the soft centers of things while winged, multi-legged, life stole sweet sips before too becoming part of the feast.  Butterflies and bees sucked down fermented juices while squirrels, chipmunks and cottoned balled bunnies left most of the rot to rot whilst exploring the area for tastier treats, always minding closely the company they kept.  They fled and adverted certain disaster when packs of coyotes came calling; literally.  The coyotes, coy and lithe, preferred rolling in the rot before leaving traces of their own secret scent as invisible claim on the sacred space.  Daring deer ignored their declaration and freely nibbled on the bits of fruit still clinging in the trees leaving behind only the pieces too rank for their delicate

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>