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
