THE MOSS-BEARDED APPLE TREE
No snapping switch brings instant light to the farmhouse.
I light five
candles while my children play boisterously,
then stoke the fire for the
evening cooking.
Outside the window, a moss-bearded apple tree,
weathered as the verandah, probes in the sunset
the secrets of centuries
buried in the unpruned orchard.
This tree once flourished like the
farmhouse families in sun, mist
and silence truncated by guns and chainsaws,
bellows and bleats,
the echoing hoot of amorous owls and fractured echoes of
laughter,
but still its lichen-scabbed trunk sluices sap to its
branches,
seasoned with snow or blossom, or summer-leaf green,
raucous
with parrots then gravid with apples and children,
and still the apple
tree scrabbles, swollen jointed,
to survive my grandchildren's
grandchildren.
I see the vision sideways and turn to stare again at the apple
tree.
Framed in cedar, reflected through glass, the budding ghosts
of
five candles burn merrily as Christmas
or some more ancient festival, in the
skeletal boughs of the apple tree.
First published in the Australian Review, Weekend
Australian , 13 May 2000, p.15.
Re-published in rePUBlic Readings 1,
Walleah Press, September 2000 (back cover).
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