Aftermath

It seems the cranberries I tried to make into sauce, sweetened with orange juice, refused to be budged into sweetness.  Of course it may have helped if I'd used sweetened orange juice, or tasted the o.j. ahead of time. I assumed Whole Foods orange juice would be sweet.  The sauce may not be worth saving.  Some such things need to be let go... with grace.  Our ash tree?  Not so much.

This is the morning after,

The morning after the turkey,

After the cranberry sauce so sour

The leftover sauce

Will have to be doctored

For sweetness,

Perhaps baked into muffins.

The rest of the family

Still sleeps sound

In the light

Of late morning.

Pale blue sky

Highlights bare trees.

The lone backyard squirrel

Fluffs his tail

Runs up and down the ash tree.

The tree still survives

The borer:

Emerald green

From China.

We doctored the tree

For life

Last year.

It is still alive for us,

For the squirrel.

We may have to call it quits

On the cranberry sauce.