The Old Venerable Apple Tree

The old apple tree which dominated the corner of the lower meadow near the road for so many years finally succumbed to the slow persistent tug of gravity and old age and fell across the road, partially blocking it. I was able to drive around it, the length of trunk not quite fully occupying the width of road, granting me even in death this one last consideration. In truth, she was mostly dead years ago but the mass of vines, bitter sweet and poison ivy principally, took every advantage of her decrepit verticality in a mad frenzy of sky stretching, and hid the fact. Now, indisputably dead and resembling a beached whale, she was forever relieved of her quiet sentinel over the passing seasons across the meadow.

Fact is, she was never much to look at being always grossly deformed of limb and nearly buried in vines. But she did produce yearly the sweetest little red apples and in great quantity too! Most of the apples fell into the riot of brambles at her base to be eaten by untold legions. But at least a few would make it into the yearly applesauce effort, appreciated long after the seasonal downfall.

I never much paid attention to her, these few short musings being the bulk of conscious thought directed her way in all the years she stood quietly making no claims for my affections. Now that she is gone, I feel a sad unoccupied place in my heart, nothing much, more like a tender sigh of things remembered and no more. A quiet acceptance of the fleeting passage of time and a vague remembrance of the sweetness of little red apples.