Becky Dennison Sakellariou               Gathering Apricots First Prize Poetry Contest 2006             Dusk settles on my bent arms, my body longs for the soft damp earth. The night pauses as I step across the dried cut grass toward the apricot tree. The crickets begin their homing call, I bend down, opening my skirts to fill them with the sweet orange fruit still warm and they have told me I must shovel out the bodies into other rooms where fires rage all night how can I  My eyes return to the piles of tiny fruit in their blue bowls. As they slowly rot, their smell hovers around my hands And I cannot stop watching them but I must and so I touch the skin of each one and whisper Rebecca Sarah Thomas before filling my barrow Night moves in to shroud the far fields, the closing blossoms. I sit, hands wet and pungent, unable to let go of anything even        one sound of breathing