Apple Blossom

Do you remember shaking apple trees
in the front yard, crawling
under oak fences to pick worms
from where they’d burrowed?

Mother was baking bread, we watched
through one pale window, she kneading dough
humming the lullaby of lonesome women
we mistook for prayer.

Crunching into fruit we tucked bare feet
into grass and scowled at blue sky, where
robins flew with their red trimmed by dew.
We, uninvited, scratched the dirt and waited.

And memory, like apple blossoms,
returned this year without you. Sometimes
we must write from darker places, gather
feathers where they’ve fallen. Eat alone.