Walter Jones's Orchard.

   To pick your orchard, you should have three things:
   First, a good ladder; second, a bag that hangs
   Around your neck, its bottom a trap door
   Latched by a cord that when unhooked lets pour
   The apples bruiseless into third, your boxes.

   That fall, however, surprised by the expected
   (For hadn't I in May admired the airy
   Smother of blossoms, sensed everywhere
   The tingle of bees after pollen, in August propped
   Branches too weak to carry the promised crop?),

   Out of boxes with half the apples to pick
   I drove two hours north to load a truck
   With the unused Eastern Standards of Mrs. Jones
   (Little, quick, 70 maybe, living alone).
   Walter, she told me, nailed together three hundred

   From rough pine boards one year, and then he died,
   Leaving them stacked in the barn. Where, I wondered,
   As I wrote the check, was Walter Jones's orchard?
   The farm was small; I saw no apple trees,
   Though plenty of pines. A clever way to use

   The trees he did have? Was Walter Jones surprised
   Like me by the expected--or simply wise
   Enough to consider boxes the prudent way
   To start an orchard? Maybe his secret aim
   Was to leave his soul in wood. For his widow to sell.

   Walter Jones had built his boxes well.
   No nail pulled, no side or bottom burst
   To dump its load of Fancies in the dirt.
   And now each fall when all the orchard's picked
   My cooler's packed with Walter Jones's boxes.