I reach for a simple truth: some stone fruit is worth a fall. J.P. White

I grew up a stone’s throw from cherry orchards
in the Valley of Hearts Delight before it turned Silicon.

For six weeks each summer, my mother drove the farmer’s dusty, rutted road
to buy the mahogany-colored delights from a dirty card table in front of a white barn.

Plump and juicy, I ate them eagerly, knowing the season would end too soon,
not realizing the orchard would eventually be gone.

Overjoyed with my bounty, I never did the math.
7,000 cherries a tree, 250 cherries a pie,

thirty-six summers of sweetness before
an offer from eBay to buy the land, too rich to pass up

Decades later when our son started college, we moved to the country,
inheriting two Rainier cherry trees, twin spindly sentries standing side by side.

Sparse and scrawny, they produced no fruit year after year,
until one May day when I caught a flash of red as I pulled into the garage.

But when I went out later, the trees were bare, small woody spurs
dotting their branches the only proof the fruit had been there.

The next year, I watched more closely, determined to beat the birds
to the heart-shaped fruit, as soon as I saw the first blush of color on the trees.

Startling the sparrows and starlings who had already begun to feast,
I found both trees blanketed with red-gold Rainers.

As I stood upon the ladder, reaching for the fruit,
I thought of the long-lost cherries of my childhood.

The way, like so much else, the trees are no longer here.
their lives cut short, though the memory of their sweetness still remains.