This Shade

This is my mother’s childhood home, my own.
Late summer: bushels warp in orchard grass,
The apples drop into an insect drone
Pervasive as this shade; we sense the past.
Mnemonic as the taste of late, warm fruit,
This arbor and its sentimental blur
Of earth and roses resurrect those brute,
Voracious children we forget we were.
The broad leaves stir along the vine—intrusion
Gentle as this present—where my mother
Steps beneath a vegetable confusion
Savage as our hold on one another.
Beyond this tangle of espaliers, noon
Passes in the shadow of a perfect arc;
Here bees have sucked the ripe grapes dry, and soon
The skins will settle, sweeter for the dark.