fall is coming and then winter

This poem is only about apples

and bucolic memories of autumn gold
during a Pennsylvania childhood,
where in early fall I would
climb craggy apple tree limbs to load
the skirt front of my tee shirt
with Braeburns and tangy Crispins for sweet desserts.
This poem is about a bushel basket between my knees
and mother teaching me how to pare Fujis
in a spiral toward my thumb leaving, in the end,
tiny rough pectin-brown cuts like on her thumbs.
I always wondered if my fingerprint would change,
if I could alter my identity by paring McIntosh,
leaving, in the end, a bowl of orange-red swirls
like the ringlets I tried to create every night
in my own thin hair with pink foam rollers.
I didn’t like myself then. I wanted to be beautiful.
I wasn't, but this poem is about apples.
I am tired of writing about a pending winter,
darkness, and love. I have had too much, bruised,
I roam through memories from the east,
where everything began.
I write about apples and fall and recall
the Amish apple-head dolls
with their shriveled faces set
above black aprons in miniature rocking chairs.
Would I ever live to be that old?
How many winters until then?
How many freezers full of applesauce, apple cider,
and apple pie with lattice top?
My mother taught me how to bake,
pick the fleshy pink, bruised or not,
they all have worth, but I don't bake much anymore,
not for one, living in the west, where everything ends.
Blossoms pass, Golden Delicious fades.
I have an apple tree waiting for me before winter’s sleep,
confident that I will step out of my darkness
soon enough to pluck the last fruit from its branch,
blushed on the sun side, I dip a slice in caramel sauce
and remember who I am, where I came from,
and I delight again in the inner sweetness of my life —
a great harvest —
the only life in front of me.