The leaving was such that each applein the orchard glassed over into ghost-formon a single night. Centers rotted, dropped out,only translucent orbs at the end of wooded knots remained.A buck arrives, noses them to the ground.His only want: to hear the shatter. First my grandmother,then my brother. A permanent Autumn settles across my face.Brinks become a fabric to dress in.I practice sewing parts of my body shut:the mouth, an ear, the space between my fingers.At the edge of the orchard I find an owl.Bring my hands around the middle of the algid body,between my palms it moves as dead things move.Still, I’m gentle as I walk the owl out of the orchardto the place of bramble and stumps. Lay the bird out like a boat,like a baby in the arms, like a dirge.Slow gold light slips,the night freeze blackens fruit trees.I continue to visit the owl. The spiders come.The flies, too. For a moment one of the owl’s eyes opens.I look through the eye into the back of his death,parts of flight and story leak out.The collapse of the left lung: green.The collapse of the right lung: sky.I’ve only ever had one good dreamin 46 years of bad dreams and it was of sleepingin a moon field with my daughter while friendsplaced inocybe between my teeth.The eye of the owl closes.The buck says it’s peaceful here, to be with you like this.I don’t say anything because I don’t speak anymore.Within a streak of light, wasps fly out of the groundas leaves fall in the orchard.I become a ghost apple at the nose of a buck.