The Apricot Tree

“There is an old adage that an apricot tree will not grow far from the mother tree.”

 

It took way too many years

for her to leave the town

she had been born in,

was rooted to,

but she knew it was, quite simply,

a matter of pruning herself back

in order to survive,

a sharp, precise, aggressive cut

 

When she finally did,

gathered her couragein the way, as a child,

she had watched as her grandmother gathered apricots,

filling her white cotton apron with the soft orange fruit

careful not to bruise them,

always handing her one to taste

 

-- she can still smell them,

the apricots from her grandmother’s trees,

sweet and musky,

feel the velvet smoothness beneath her fingers,

 and seeing the home-canned jars lined up

like Tiffany glass gleaming on the windowsill –

 

Tonight she stands in her own small kitchen,

years and miles away from the one she grew up in,

placing apricots one by one into a shallow bowl

and imagines she is still standing

in the shade of that densely canopied tree,

feels the soft touch of her grandmother’s hand against hers

as she reaches out to take the offering

and accepts the simple gift of

remembering the tree

which bore its fruit

 

 

© Melanie Turner February 8, 2008