WINDFALLS

It's like that
even in autumn
especially in autumn
when you become part of the fall.

You have forgotten to drink
enough water through summer, and now
you mirror the parched, desiccated
leaves that crunch and crumble
beneath the heels of your boots.

You are being pulled back,
taut elastic,
to your roots.

You pass a green tub
full of this year's Bramley windfalls

- leaves fall,
dancing free of your marching feet.

Everything is not dead
when it falls.

I pick up the living,
shaped like hearts,
the plump, yellow, still beating.

I run out of breath
clutching on to the promise
of new shoots awaiting me.

I am gorging on the wind
that feeds me hope.

I am home.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2015

(On my way over to the nieces, three words stop me and start a poem. By the time I am writing the last three words, I am home. This is a love poem to the beat of my own heart, the march of my own feet, the breath that carries me to love.)
Participating in dverse poets and magpie tales poetry prompts.
Images via dverse and magpie. Photo credit: Daniel Murtagh.