The following text is a poem by Tom Sutherland.

After the Fire

The orchard still smells of smoke three weeks on, the sweetness wrong, a burnt-sugar grief that catches in the throat before the mind has time to name it loss.

5 I walk the rows of what was there: black branches laced with grey. The apples that survived are mottled, strange, their skins still carrying the patterns of the heat.

At night I hear the wood still settling, 10 the long complaint of timbers finding new accommodations with the cold. The trees have learned to speak in contractions.

My father planted this. Not me. I inherited the fruit and did not think 15 to count the seasons I had assumed. Now I count them differently.

The ash is good for soil, they tell me. The roots beneath are likely sound. I nod and walk the rows again at dusk 20 and do not ask the question I am asking.

How and to what effect is imagery used in this text?