Maybe I’m just in Spring-mode these days …but I re-discovered Robert Frost recently and can’t seem to get one poem, in particular, out of my head.

Even though ‘apple picking’ takes place later in the year…I kept envisioning the trees and their blossoms while reading it.

I’ve been thinking about all sorts of Spring-like things lately (especially after my weekend of foraging in the ‘forest’)…from planting and dish gardens… to wanting to paint the walls in my house (again).

(I’m considering something in the turquoise family.)

It’s all a sure sign I’m ready for a new season and/or a change!

So…since the poem inspired me to start thinking about Spring (and considering I even did something about it this past weekend – see previous post) – I thought I’d share it; as it just may inspire you as well!

After Apple Picking

Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

above image found online and ‘tweaked’ in photoshop