Maureen Eppstein

Shared Bounty

ripening apples
at twilight
gleam dusky red

in the tree
by a wall
that holds back a hill

young fox appears
leaps lithely up the wall
walks a tree branch

nosing each fruit for ripeness
daintily picks one with its teeth
sits on the wall to eat

a sibling strolls down the hill
finds a windfall
sits nearby

having eaten together
they flow down the wall
tails high

graceful
as a pastel line
swirled over a page

Maureen Eppstein’s most recent poetry collection is Horizon Line (Main Street Rag 2020). Finishing Line Press published her chapbook Earthward in 2014, and will publish a new chapbook, Daughter in 2024. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Willawaw Journal and Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2018), and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Crossing the boundary between the arts and the sciences, her poems have been included in a textbook on geometric modeling, a university geology course and a National Audubon Society report.