Listening to the Sprinklers

[rejectomorph]

The orchard at the end of the block is now a dense mass of green. Small green apples have formed among the green leaves. Under the trees, the ground is covered in long green grass, thriving on the irrigation water that flows from the low sprinklers. The sprinklers are turned on in the evening, after the day has cooled down, to conserve water. They run most of the night. I stand in my front yard and, when the breeze is from the south, I smell the dampness in the air. I listen to the chattering of the sprinklers. It becomes as much a part of the atmosphere as the wind sighing in the pines and the crickets chirping in the grass. In the hour before dawn, when the sprinklers are turned off, the sudden quiet is like an alarm. It presages the day and the sun and the heat that will settle on the town, and the light that will soon make the remaining drops of water on leaf and blade glisten, and will make the apples grow toward ripe redness, water and sunlight caught inside their skins.