low hanging fruit is all relative

to the birds,

playfully mocking my earth-bound choreography

it's all low hanging fruit

to the squirrel,

contemplating my comparatively lumbering footwork

it's almost all low hanging fruit

to the snail

snugly eyeing the tall grass for signs of fallen apples

there is no hanging fruit

the derogatory swagger of that phrase

low hanging fruit

a hackneyed capitalist hack -

a catch all -

all the fruit

all the toil

all the struggle

to risk ones life for a bushel of apples

that is success

to leave a barren tree -

where no other animals might feed

that is triumph

I balance on two jagged rocks

my pregnant belly forcing a new focus on balance

a feeling I haven't felt shake my legs since infanthood

fitting

the apple tree

ripe and pregnant

stands ready for an autumn feast

I reach and climb and shake, adjust and do it again

I feel frustrated scanning the plump red to green gradient,

the instagram cliché of apples hanging far above me

and I

weighted down by my own ripening fruit

can't climb any further to reach them

I land with a thud in the grass -

a retreating slither flicks my blinders

narrow, hypocritical

I am more than the fruit I bear -

Even I am an entire ecosystem of life -

a self amongst others that are me

and I'm not alone

I look up and see birds returning to their breakfast

atop lichen brushed branches

down to the mushrooms cozying to roots

to the life I can't see, but feel

in the dented apples still twirling on their stems

in the softened brown bowls nestled in the grass

I look at my bag – filled with apples

and step back

no more low hanging fruit

just crown fruit and ground fruit

What was for me, I've picked

the capitalist paradigm is not practiced here

nothing is wasted

precisely because it is left

precisely because it is shared

low hanging fruit

it's all relative

they're all relative