You were seven and you rose before the sun.
Even then, the lightning that I love in you was present —
the fond and ardent current in your limbs
your manic-hot unique kinesis:
darting through a farm in Tennessee,
past the ordered orchard,
a pistoned-powered pixie,
an electric girl with raven hair.

Decades cannot dim this image,
nor physics as I see the past.
Lovers’ confabulations are strange, the way they bend all laws;
a beloved’s recollections shape to share,
and their stories dearest to us
grow so salient that
they arrange in our own remembrance.

You filed to a child’s chores —
collecting eggs for breakfast. I see
your purposeful sunup march; your little strides, their industry;
your ink-colored hair, drawn to an overhead bun;
your pressed pink lips – the morning’s labors had
absented their customary mischief,
doodled over your smile like
graffiti of a ribald rhyme.

The barn was enlarged in contrast with you —
at your elfin outline,
the great gray door grew vaster,
the inner beams and corners angled farther,
and the hay there whispered softer
for your footsteps at dawn.

A cacophony of fowl
indignant at your diligence
complained over your little hands,
gentle though they were,
gingerly loading the heated carrier.
Even here, at this young year, I see
your life’s indelible tenderness.

Then, the reverse march,
again past the orchard.
The sun rose over the verdant rows, and the darkness fell like rain,
down and away, to trail in running shadows at their roots,
an aqueous dim
arriving at its strange and daily alteration,
made whole and soft and porous
to become the black soil.

All of the orchard’s birdsong
scored the course of your girlhood.
Its colors were the palette,
for sustenance in watercolor chroma
scented rustic air.

In rainbow, alternating
seasons of heavy fullness
were pears bearing the green of Eden;
round red apples, so crisp
that they crackled at the sweetened bite;
the flourishing, supple underfoot gems of strawberries;
ripe and oranging crabapples;
opaling peaches of the very same tincture
as your own Romanian cheeks.

Each of the ordered rows was
a phalanx of fragrance,
a linear, leaning clutch of sweetened air.
Bats were known to favor
the pears in particular — from the ripe green skin rose
their perfume of opulent sugars, as alluring
as the lotus that fascinated
the compulsions of Odysseus’ men.

I see your surprise one morning —
Your jaw falling at an unexpected silver sunrise,
your fair face reflecting
the brightly lucent, winter-colored
hue of a rolling frost.
At clear and cooling night
the starlit, jealous heavens
had snatched all of their perfume back.
The warm air rose in their stygian fit
while layers of cooler gales
were made an encompassing brush
over the whole of the orchard —
rendered, then, to a chill and high,
glistening and nigh-acrylic whitesilver.

Along this abruptly colder
way to your labors, one day,
a sight surprised you,
like a single little chestnut
upon a fitted sheet.
It might have been a fallen plum —
the bat which met your mercy.
The rime had smothered over it.
The ivory ice had sheened to mean
its destitute demise.

You ran to help.
You always run to help.
The idyll of your life
is a history of sprinting.
I try to remind you, at times,
how your years’ trajectory
could be plotted by lives touched —
the lives that you’ve changed,
and, thus, how you’ve changed the world,
for they are all a part of it.

You darted along the rows
where every rich fruit
had kindled into argent,
where every wispy limb was weighted
in dooming translucence.
And you sprang to a newer labor.
Your little frame fell lower as you crouched
to cup the cold and beryl breast.

Where others would recoil
at your brown and leathery,
Gothic beneficiary,
your hands folded over its heart
and you raised it up from the frost.
You named him “Mordecai” and brought him home.
Though you felt your fingers sting with digging, you drew
your power,
your natural, warm, unique, redeeming
reverse of whitesilver.

I see and feel them all –
the pulsating heart,
the tiny ice crystals, the fine and matted
fur the color of mulberry,
your little cupped hands like porcelain,
the warmth,
the warmth I love in you,
present there, decades before we met.

Allison,
You are seasons of heavy fullness.
You are perfume over the orchard.
You are watercolor chroma under sun.
You are hands that fold to warm in an unsparing frost,
when all is forsaken in whitesilver.

Observing the ordered rows of your days and your mercies,
I learn tenderness.
What cold will hold my roots will wane with season.
What sun will rise again will ease my limbs.
What darkness there may be in me will fall like rain
and then, in running shadow, drain
to become the black soil.

— Happy Birthday, Allison!

(c) Eric Robert Nolan

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Photo credit: julian dobson / Restored Apple Orchard