After Apple-Picking My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the sky. I had a farm.

The apple-picker’s vision is true.

I have a great fear of falling Running to catch up with light falling. Aren’t lights made to fall apart? No one else could find parts of me, Then all again should I become solid. Of homes I knew in the apple trees.

The beckoning earth becomes intermediate. With the frost on the form of the day. After apple-picking, I am now part of the tree. Hold the apples back, keep something for tomorrow.

• Robert Frost