Fall 2007 Issue

"Apple Bit " by Georgia Julius

The summer and its sun are setting as we drive down the part of Pennsylvania that could be confused with a part of Alabama except maybe for those mountains on the left.  This time is ours for lingers and pauses so we can roll onto grainy shoulders of empty roads with grassy elbows of earth that bend up into apple orchards as structured and sensible as the alphabet.  But while apples rot and fall to soft earth, letters do not rot.  The occasional H or P does fall, silent, but apples never fall silent.   A slight thud like half a heartbeat, one last pump of juice before the soil’s repossession.

Windows down, we climb through fields scratching the ankles of the Appalachians.  The apples with which we fill our pockets have already fallen, so that our act is not stealing, but salvation.  They will disappear like contracted letters, punctuating their graves with black apple seeds.  We climb until we can see the sun setting, fearing farmers with shotguns shooting kids with cameras shooting apples like William Tell, apples that sometimes fall but never fall silent from trees in alphabetical order.