Years since it bore an apricot. Many more since it bore many. Half the trunk rotted, fallen, gathered in the windrows by the field. On mossy branches raspberries grow, making rainbows. But every spring, around my mother's yahrzeit it remembers (as do I) and blossoms in the palest pinks fiercely, profusely, fragile. Nothing will come of it, as nothing comes of me, except forgetting, except small bits of me riding away on petals on the wind.
Meditations from Hillesum Farm in Ontario, Canada