New England pours me cider in the fall.
One taste brings back Vermont’s September days
spent coat less, climbing orchard trees. Each fall
the silver ladder pushed the ground away
and carried me to apples ripe with time.
The Old Red Cider Mill’s been closed ten years,
and local apple cider’s hard to find
in any season after fall. Winters,
I buy it, bottled at Cervelli’s Farm,
the only roadside fruit stand left in town.
At night I keep a soup pot full and warm
with cider on a burner. My house grows
an orchard, fills itself with apple trees
through cider’s scent, and outside, fallen leaves.