When I was 12 my family moved to The Farm.  There is nowhere in mind that soothes my psyche as The Farm and for such a few years of my life,  my teen years and yet these filled my yearning for something my heart knew.  In my memory bank those years were a return to what I found to be a union with nature, with my natural self.  No matter the troubles or the hardships,  there was a something in me that found rest and found me ‘at home.’   The apple orchard was large  and I remember feeling so rich.  I remember best the crisp taste of the apples when I bit into them and they bit me back.   

Windfalls

They lay on the ground
in the soft grasses
that one would think
to cushion a fall. . .

But not enough.  The wind
already had dropped them
and they were blemished.
Not good enough to make
the grade for perfect apples,
to bring top dollar
but still with purpose.

We pick them up
by the bushel,
for in the barn the cider mill
in wooden sculpture waits.

The apples will roll
and as they are crushed,
onto the pails will come their juices,
foamy, thick on the tongue and sweet.

The stores will serve
the slick and bottled
to the city’s well heeled but
the poor will come for
The Farm’s gallons that will be put
into pitchers on the table,
nectar of the windfalls.

Not perfect without blemish
for the elite, but robust and full
of nature’s reckless breath,

the storm’s  windfalls for the rest of us.