Sunday, Yakima

This morning I walked the rows of apple trees in search of yesterday's clutch of eggs, and paced in vain, finding only the dessicated, the abandoned, the dead. Even an outhouse was padlocked — I reached my camera through a narrow gap in the door opening and took a photo.

When I told my brother about the nest, he said, "the mowers are coming tomorrow." My hope is that the nest is close enough to the tree trunk that it will escape shredding, but how could the pheasant hen withstand the roar of that destroying machine so close to her eggs? My brother also said that the orchard had just that morning been sprayed with pesticide, so there goes even the potential for hope.

And without my photo, I would this morning have believed that yesterday's nest had been only a mirage, borne of the sun — my rain-weary eyes were quite possibly in shock from the brightness — and the wind which moaned its loneliness down through the valley.

Even the smudge-pot graveyard — despite the appearance of a private conversation among their rusted convocation —spoke of desertion.

(Though the red heart of the the half-apple, still-seeded, reminds me of love's possibilities —)