Ghost apple

 
 Escaping the final harvest,
 haunting a lichen-limbed nest,
 the ghost apple hangs transparent
 where once branches bent
 laden with wanton fruit,
 swollen to a pregnant glut.
  
 Frozen rain followed first frost,
 snow-white fairness almost lost.
 Preserved beyond the cidery fall,
 fermented flesh seeped through the hole,
 left behind a hollow, icy sphere -
 a lucid memory of what once was here.
  
 Haloed moon as midnight falls, 
 the unearthly orchard calls,
 and a weathered hand
 ghosted by a wedding band
 reaches for the ephemeral fruit,
 twisting tenderly at its root. 
  
 She holds it a brief moment,
 musing the frail ornament.
 As it melts she knowing, fears
 that such beauty must disappear. 
 This fairy-tale fruit is illusion -
 a glass slipper of sublime delusion. 
Suzanne Fairless-Aitken