The Orchard Keepers

The scene that opened at their farmhouse door
each summer morning was of apple trees,
their branches greener than the day before
with fruit that swelled with sweetness in the breeze.

It wasn’t merely part of what they’d planned.
It was a metaphor that meant this thing
between them, him and her, and with the land,
a harmony the easy wind would sing.

But air-borne apple essence falls to must;
their elders could have told them what would come,
a storm of willful choices, gust on gust,
and hard results there is no turning from.

Between contending winds of will or fate,
or by some fatal blow combining both,
the paradise they labored to create
was storm-snapped trees and tangled undergrowth.