Apple Drop
On a dense day damp with drizzle
on my way to get the mail
I walk by the barn where
the horses are grazing as usual.
They don’t look up,
but slowly all three
edge closer to the fence
to smell my new green umbrella.
Grassy mouths and hay breath.
Behind them the cobwebbed barn
is full of the hollow shells of spiders.
The fences and the barn, too,
will be pulled down,
while the little tree continues
with its green, misshapen apples
each year, a meadow full of them.