I ate an apple the other day all the way through except for the seeds. I walked outside with an outstretched palm of the tiny black dots when an astonishing red cardinal swooped low from its mighty throne of the sky to snatch one up from my hand in its sharp beak. I smiled, I watched it fly off, and proceeded to scatter the rest of the small pods in the backyard. Not two days later I was passing through the kitchen to get some juice and a bagel when through the window I saw the cardinal again. It perched on a local tree branch and looked uncannily happy. It appeared to be smiling. I went out back to get a closer look. For a moment we made eye contact and its smirk grew wider and then it suddenly fell to the ground below, dead before it hit. Rightly confused I scurried over to its body. It lay still, unmoved. Then slowly, it started shaking and twitching, and then its beak seemed to be opening as if something was causing it to be ajar from within. Then it came. A sapling was sprouting forth. Growing and growing, shooting its roots through the bird’s body into the soil. The sapling turned to a tree as it grew still even larger. Then it all made sense after the apple tree was at its peak. The bird was no more and the tree was full of apples, the red, most reddest apples you’d ever seen. The bird was no more but I believe its red coloured feathers gave their bright pigment to the hanging fruit. Soon there were cardinals swarming the tree. Red cardinals. Yellow and blue ones and even a brilliant green one. All cardinals.
-tom hymn
