Apple Blossom Rites

Craig W. Steele

Another late spring blizzard looms
as apple trees discard frail blooms,
festooning gloomy city lots
and frosting orchards’ green-caped plots.

For too-short moments I delight
in wading, ankle-deep, in white:

They lose their glory, overdone
and withering in hellish sun
while baking brown in oven-heat,
beseechingly, around my feet.

How cold the cut of Nature’s knife
that death’s required to ripen life.