Windfall
by Erica Z. Wrightson
Gravenstein season lasts for months in Sonoma.
Harvesting the fruit at Yost’s,
trees crippled by crop, backs not meant to bend,
hunched, scoliosed spines.
Harvesting my fourteenth summer,
Rebecca newly dead.
We learned to leave the fallen,
soft, swollen.
These casualties are man-made.
Leave the unripe on the branch;
accidents and mistakes we don’t pick.
