The Apple Trees at Olema

Abstract

They were walking in the woods along the coast and in a grassy meadow, wasting, they came upon two old neglected apple trees. Moss thickened every bough and the wood of the limbs looked rotten but the trees were wild with blossom and a green fire of small new leaves flickered even on the deadest branches. Blue-eyes, cranes-bills, and little dutchmen flecked the meadow and an intricate, leopard-spotted leaf-green flower whose name they didn't know. Trout-lily, he said; she said, adder'stongue. She is shaken by the raw, white, back-lit flaring of the apple blossoms. He is exultant as if some thing he knew were verified and looks to her to mirror his response. If it is afternoon, a thin moon of my own dismay fades like a scar in the sky to the east of them. He could be knocking wildly at a closed door in a dream. She thinks, meanwhile, that moss resembles seaweed drying lightly on a dock. Torn flesh, it was the repetitive torn flesh of appetite in the cold white blossoms that had startled her. Now it seems tender and where she was repelled, she takes the measure of the trees and lets them in. But he no longer has the apple trees. This is as sad or happy as the tide, going in or coming out, at sunset. The light catching in the spray that spumes up on the reef is the color of the lesser finch they notice now flashing dull gold in the light