My aging apple tree, which never has given me
more than a few green sour apples, is turning
into something
that looks like
a Portuguese Cork tree, its gnarled
bark peeling
out from its core, a festering yellowish
gumming oozing
from under its layering.

I tree-whisper: you need attention.
I should climb up
its crumbling bark and saw off a few appendages.
But climbing up means
climbing down, and I’m not sure of that.
The tree isn’t the only aging plant.  
It’s never been properly pruned. A dead limb
here and there. Never properly parented by me.
Put in the wrong ground with the wrong soil. And not
nursed. Husbanded.
Nurtured.
It knows more about being an apple tree
than I do, I rationalized my neglect.

By their fruits you shall know them.  

I spotted a few blossoms this year,  but
can’t find
a solitary apple. Maybe the squirrels
got them, they usually do, or maybe the tree’s
just old and giving up.

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Yogi and I lecture
the aging sapling, but it’s a
one-way conversation,
the yellow sap
still leaching. Even Yogi
can’t brace it back to its
youthful promise, can’t get
it to envision the one-tree-orchard
I imagined at its planting,
branches sagging under
the weight
of luscious reds
and bracing
greens.