Skip to content

The Gardener of Forgotten Fruit

A gardener in a dreamlike orchard where each fruit holds a memory and every bite tastes like maybe.

A gardener in a hush-lit orchard, tending to fruits that only dreamers taste.

He tends an orchard no one planted, each tree bending with the weight of memories no one asked for.


Listen

audio-thumbnail
The Gardener of Forgotten Fruit - Systems Cowboy
0:00
/179.232

Lyrics

He tends the orchard no one planted
where each tree forgets its name
The fruit hangs low with memory
but never tastes the same

Some swell with childhood promises
others bruise with might-have-beens
One tree drops regrets in spring
and ripens them by wind

He prunes with care, no question asked
Each cut unburdens time
Once carved a branch into a flute
and played a wordless rhyme

A plum hummed softly in its skin
A pear exhaled a sigh
He fed a stranger half an apple
and they remembered why

The seeds won’t sprout in daylight
They root in dream instead
One grew into an old front porch
Another into dread

He picks in silence, hums in thirds
His basket made of sleep
He once fermented laughter
that made a widow weep

He doesn’t sell the harvest
just offers it by feel
One bite might end a question
Another might unseal

He keeps a journal in the soil
bound in twine and dirt
The pages fill with names of fruits
that never learned to hurt

And when the orchard closes in
and dusk begins to thrum
He eats a fig called Almost
and forgets what he’s become


About this song

A garden of memories grown in hush, each fruit a dream that’s almost real.


Return to: The Almanac of Impossible Folk