New Year’s Resolution

Take a bite
of warm apple sauce
on this frigid January day.

Remember
your small granddaughter
climbing the rickety ladder
by the tree,
its branches
drooping with fruit.
Remember
how she leaned
precariously in
to pick the apple
she had her eye on,
how she wiped it
on her blue tulle skirt
and bit in,
making tiny teeth marks
all around its perimeter.

Take another bite
of warm apple sauce
on this frigid January day.

Feel its sweetness
on your tongue,
how it soothes
your swollen throat.
Imagine
the good it will do
in your ailing body.
A small good.

Resolve
to be that small good
in the hurting body
of this world.

By Maria Brady-Smith
Photo by Mike Smith