Rot never starts with thunder or with flame,
it creeps in where the bark was split too long.
The orchard bears the mark but not the blame,
though every branch remembers what went wrong.

The apples darken slowly on the limb,
their sweetness turning inward, close and still.
No fall is needed; gravity grows dim
when rot completes the work the years fulfil.

They name the ground corrupt, the soil untrue,
as if decay arrived from somewhere else,
ignoring how the roots were starved of dew,
how mould was taught to feed upon itself.

No charge is laid, for rot does not accuse.
It only makes of endings what they choose.

Penned by my hand on the 12th of Aeguary, in the year 996 AF.