Climbing Trees

We went to climb trees in the jungle gyms of green apple orchards, bare legs dangled toes dipped into shady pools of sky. Secret girlfriends climbed barefooted onto impossibly roomy branches, their skirts improbably short, in the swinging bowers. Memory plays its tricks perhaps it was in a golden cornfield that the apples turned red and tempting our differences revealed in circles of sunlight. That summer spread itself like buttery new mown hay, and deep within it we happened together, never guessing that a chained and confused adolescence was about to steal us away forever.