my mobile-home neighbor was the first to speak."you`re not cutting it down, are you?" another neighbor winced as i lopped off a branch. "don`t kill it, now," he cautioned. soon half the neighborhood had joined me under the apple arbor. it struck me that i had lived there for five years and only now was learning these people`s names, what they did for a living and how they passed the winter. it was as if the old apple tree gathering us under its boughs for the dual purpose of acquaintanceship and shared wonder. i couldn`t help recalling robert frost`s* words:

　　the trees that have it in their pent-up buds

　　to darken nature and be summer woods

　　one thaw led to another. just the other day i saw one of my neighbors at the local store. he remarked how this recent winter had been especially long and lamented not having seen or spoken at length to anyone in our neighborhood. and then, recouping his thoughts, he looked at me and said, "we need to prune that apple treeagain."