Gathering Apples in First Snow

This year October takes us sudden, breaks 
The honeylocust leaves with a parching frost 
And casts them, ashen green and clattering, down
On sidewalks still glaring as white as summer. 
My calendar, thumbtacked beside the scarred
Refrigerator door, spells out September. 
I lift the leaf: improvidence this first 
Year in a rented house with garden (plowed 
When I came, but unsown) and five apple trees,
Their bearing laced (I sprayed too late) with worms. 

The west of afternoon draws dark; I’m picking
The last apples, some rotten on the stem, 
Others by birds half hollowed, good flesh ridged
And seared. Leave those. Still on the tree some stems
Do not give easy, and I let fall into 
A rainwarped cardboard box twigs and the bitten
Leaves with sound fruit—too far not to bruise, from
This muddy rung. Silence. Around me, in 
The tree, the snow starts falling, ticking like 
Sand spilled on parchment, salt on old oilcloth.