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