Oh, how it grows.
Nursing from its mothering soil,
through wooden arms.
Ripe for the wanderer,
wise enough to choose smartly.
The apple tastes sweetest, freshly picked,
that instant, before the brown forms
around the bite.
Before the slow rot that brings
the scavenger and its eggs.
One should cherish
that first flavor, that first witness
and seize the essence, the birth
of an idea, the passion of a revolution,
or the innocence of new love.
Savor that moment,
and remember the prize won
from the Dance of Ages.
Paradise is a shiny penny
whose likes become unrecognizable,
as it passes through a million pockets,
or lay waste in the crack of a sidewalk.
As it should be, at least
on this cosmic speck,
that we live on a world that turns,
where piercing light casts away darkness,
only to be enveloped by it at days end.
Aren’t the sweetest moments upon waking,
and later slipping unwittingly to sleep?
And all the rest between, a changing sky
that stands still for no man.
Nobility’s demise,
began at the picking.
Its first bite, delightful and
pleasing to the wanderer,
instead of dying on the branch
or falling quick to the mercy
of the bird or the worm; but rather
an instance of pure glory and fading.
Oh, the lucky wanderer.
Oh, the fortunate fruit.
Oh, what a wonderful,
yet fatal moment.
-M. R. Behr
