And I Will Be An Orchard...

It’s come to my attention that my immediate world has circled into another time of death and aging. The hospitals are holding loved ones, dates for wakes and funerals are being set. Plans are changed and black shirts and pants are taken out. Respect is being paid, silences allotted, bouquets of white and yellow with green leaves, are being put together, each flower given its own day to die, once the stem is cut, the lifeline severed. And I think, maybe there won’t be flowers at my funeral, but saplings. Their thin branches will be the seemingly sparse beginning of my ending. The procession of mourners will come with dirty jeans and shovels, to a plot of land, noted as fertile but neglected. They will dig holes and plant trees, spreading a handful of ashes along the roots before burying this all too important structure beneath the ground. Rows and rows of gnarled branches on comatose fruit trees will emerge. And I will be an orchard, waiting for harvest. I will grow until the time when families come to pry through my branches. They’ll lift round cheeked children up on their shoulders to reach the prettiest fruit high in the tree. Come autumn, the smell of aging cider will fill the air, when there are too many apples to pick, and the majority fall to the ground without a hand to catch them. And I will be an orchard…