A Ring of Dark Fruit

The glass vessel had kept me sheltered, but the fall of dusk called me out into the crisp evening. Beneath the bare branches of the old plum tree, several firm, dark dried plums had fallen onto a flat patch of mossy earth. Disarray under the rising moon. Kneeling quietly in the damp shadows, I collected each wrinkled fruit between my fingertips. Deliberately, with measured spaces of two finger-widths, I set eight of them into an unyielding circular orbit around an exposed tree root. No rolling. No clutter. The earth rests composed.