Adelaide Shaw

Finders Keepers

Early dusk in mid-autumn. The air is scented with damp earth and fermenting leaves. I’m on a walk in my neighborhood. As there are no sidewalks, I walk in the road, staying close to the brush, the weeds and dirt and. . . apples. Apples?  I look up. An apple tree. Here. In a suburb of New York City. The ground is covered with them. They are pitted and bruised and have  soft spots, but I gather up as many as my pockets and hands can hold, feeling like I did when as a child I found a penny on the sidewalk.

wind-fall apples
cutting out the bad parts
to make applesauce;
if time spent were money
I couldn’t afford a jar

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About the Author

Adelaide B. Shaw lives in Somers, NY  She has been creating Japanese poetic forms for fifty years. Her books, An Unknown Road and The Distance I’ve Come, are available on Amazon. She posts published work on her Whitepetals Blog. 

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