apples and dirt

This morning while walking down some random street I spotted a dirt road leading off the main road between two city blocks. It ran down the backsides of houses. It was narrow and filled with bushes. I couldn't help but recharter my course to make my way down it, the mysterious unkempt alleyway. Here's my little story about the adventure.

Timidly committing to my new course, in the first hundred feet I was brought along a rickety fence and some chipped-up house walls. Branches were reaching over me like sad hands. I plucked a leaf to remind myself that Living is a real thing and my eyeballs are actually revealing a palpable reality. Its amazing, y'know? It's why I have to touch everything, like droopy branches.
Wildflowers cluttered the bottom of the fence. Purples and oranges and blossoms shot in every direction like fireworks, catching your peripherals, ink splotches in the sunlight. A slit in the wooden fence just barely obscured my vision from the backyard beyond. Flowers bloomed like the apocalypse. I walked past them, and something up ahead snagged my eye: blackberries. I made a beeline for them..red ones and blue ones.. oh how I love picking blackberries, almost as much as I love picking apples, and maybe a little more than I love picking the apricot things in Heather's backyard. Approaching the blackberry bushes I had my doubts about whether or not I was gonna find a single ripe fruit. I scoured. Negative. I looked for over-ripe blackberries even, which are a little bit dry but intensely sweet and crunchy. None. Only cobwebs on dead berries and bright red sours were available. Alack the day. So I turned back to my dirt road and continued on. Behind me the road's entrance was narrowing between the houses. I didn't really know where I was going, but so is usual. You just go. Better to have been lost and found than never to have been lost at all.
An apple tree! My heart skipped. I'd spotted an apple tree. And not only that, this particular apple tree was hailing ripe fruits like Christmas morning. A river of splatted apples and flies paved my way to the overhanging branches, branches filled with perky red apples. Pairs and bunches and clusters of them! I felt like a schoolboy giddy with a jackpot, ready to steal every red apple from this neglected tree. I looked around for an aid, a tool of some kind to use. God himself knew I was coming, and so he conveniently placed a six foot metal rod on the ground in front of me. I picked it up and like Arthur's sword and I raised it above my head and started knocking apples down. One by one apples were tumbled to the dirt floor. I developed a system: bop around and the ripe ones fall. A couple of tries and I had mastered the art of "bop-swoop-catch," bopping an apple and catching it in mid-air. Bop, swoop, catch! Bop, swoop, catch! Bop, bop, swoop, MISS, splat. Hmm. I gathered about four apples, and a fifth for chomping. Oh my triumph, king of the apple tree! I took my spoils and wrapped them up in the daily newspaper I'd grabbed from the coffee shop. Thank you tree, I chomped away as I looked at the branches and then at the crystal-white meat of my apple. Satisfied, I turned happily back to the road. Ahead of me a car drove by for a split second. Apples and newspaper under one arm, I tossed Excalibur to the dirt and trotted the rest of the way back to the open street.
Emerging onto pavement again, I felt like I had been in another dimension or something for the past 25 minutes, (a whole nother dimension..)
Well what a thing, the simple adventure of a single abandoned dirt road. And now I have apples to show for it.

Love you guys.

Mikie