to eastern orchards go

S wift and sweet the

A pples

L ay

I n

E astern orchards

N ot

T his day some other yet to come

***

The word 'salient' being somewhat ungainly to my ears, yet hidden it seems not at all a bad word around which to bend a small verse in this obvious fashion. I profess my affection for orchards to be sincerely felt.

generous is the midwife of my days

Fetch in what falls.
Covet fat and sugared apple.
Strike the fair haired bag of wheat
paling beside the cloves.

Fetch it in the morn
to haul it hard till noon:
rut-eyed and hummock humped,
round bounty at the spine.

For those whose birth
is signaled by that sounding mark:
any a gall-shod beast
and burst-lit seed extending.

south of lower waking

It is a mystery to wake
transformed,
a grub
dividing an apple.

I'm beat. Daybreak
buoys the toxic.
Already this heat
opposes magnificence.

Why did we argue
our way all night
toward that cyst
of unwillingness

to let go, that
sac in a seed
of some lesser
climate, embracing.