Once You Plucked Me Like an Apple

It is always the same:
changed.
You have come in from the long day's work
and now, as the darkness settles around you
You remember a grove of apple trees
shining
in the moonlight,
how you shinnied up the trunk
and slid out
slowly
along the limb until you came
to the leaves, how the limb bent
just a little
as you inched your way along,
and how you filled your shirt with apples
and swung down,
dropping onto the moonlit ground
quiet as a squirrel
so the gruff farmer wouldn't wake,
and how, walking home along the road,
it all seemed like a dream
until
you polished one (me) on your sleeve
and bit in
and savored it,
your tongue startled:
so bitter,
so sweet,
so alive!