Scieppan: Unharvested

"A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft."

--Robert Frost

I have always loved this poem; and the line "May something always go unharvested... Apples or something forgotten and left, So smelling their sweetness would be no theft" inevitably runs through my mind every time I smell roses over some neighbor's garden fence or sight some breathtaking beauty belonging to some stranger strictly. The vision is my own to harvest, and the stranger seems friendlier for sharing the bounty of their work and creativity this way.

I have been terrible about posting at all this summer; but it is so hard to sit still when all the world is unharvested in some manner. The goldfinches on the volunteer sunflowers; the scents of the crab-apples crushed under foot traffic and days old with summer sunshine; the mottled sycamore bark sloughing off all over the walks where anyone who wants it may take it; the green beans on my own front fence (which are not unharvested but still keep producing, faster and faster); everything in life seems so chock full to the brim, perfect in prodigality.

"I cry you mercy," as they used to say in some of my favorite books, if I am inattentive to comments or long away from posting. But I suppose everyone has their un-harvest to be getting in, as the summer draws it's final breaths of damask and purple; I suppose we will be trysting and sharing the bounty of them all winter long.

So here are some of my summer gatherings-in, and I will post more when--well, when I do!