He takes stock from behind
the counter at the Apple House
a stone’s throw from the state line,
selling Empires and Jonagolds
for a dollar sixty-five a pound.
He knows what ripens first,
which are best left for deer,
and the nameless kind that sweeten
with frost. At dusk he watches night
cross the creek where his neighbor’s son
has finally sold the timber rights
now that his father is in hospice,
who will not come home again.
All summer the felled poplars
echo through the valley,
the snap and pop of branches
like daisy-chain firecrackers.
And on his slopes, ragged with ironweed
and goldenrod by September, scraggles
of apple trees rise toward the sky,
ones made from years of work,
cross-pollination, and chance.
On weekends he checks his trail cameras
for ginseng poachers, finding mostly
coyotes and whitetails—every once in a while
a solitary bobcat. He wonders on
the last time he saw one
in person. It was ten years back—
another drought year
when the apples fell early.
Matthew Wimberley is the author of Daniel Boone’s Window (LSU) and All the Great Territories (Southern Illinois). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Agenda, Poem-a-Day, and Threepenny Review. He lives and works in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Photos obtained via Unsplash+
