I stepped outside yesterday and noticed that the Apricot tree is already laden with golf ball sized fruit. Not yet yellow. Speckled with sunburn. They hide among the heart shaped foliage. Peeking out like small cherubs. Peeking out like love. Saying, "Life is still here." It has not yet been sucked up and spat out by darkness, or reduced to dust by the long dry summer of shame.Last summer Frank complained that there was hardly any fruit to harvest. It sent a cold shiver of metaphor through me. Jesus cursed the fig tree and it withered. The Apricot tree lay bare and fruitless. When I caught sight of the laden branches murmuring in the breeze, yesterday, I must admit I was relieved. I still hope for harvest fruit.
After the hottest november day on record, I walked along the creek at dusk in a southerly direction. Battalions of invisible insects hovering above the dead grass in columns got into my mouth and nose. I spat them out like dried herbs. Everything is so dry. The creek is almost empty. A mere trickle. You can see where the water mark has dropped along the bank. Where the water once coursed, flattening the grass into snaking ribbons. Now set dry and brittle, crumbling at the touch. Rust coloured rocks exposed to the baking november sun. No longer slippery with moss. Skeletal bodies of ancient shopping trolleys protrude from the sediment, wrapped in ribbons of flotsam. They gape at me like yawning skulls.
