Early Apples

bog
west quoddy

Early Apples

Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,

then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

                                                            Wislawa Symborska

                                                            “Under One Small Star”

And don’t, please, look away when I look

                                    away

when I am distracted by my own

longing

to gather all your windfall, all your early

strays

into my apron, into my pockets, into my

mouth

and bite down into your skin, between the soft

fontanelle,

where ants and drunken wasps have made early

cider

of the long spring and wind of summer.  All that

time

your stem, all that time broadening broad,

bulge

in the shadow of the cragged branch’s

peak

a summit achieved only in a freak high

breeze

when you are lifted up and your clasp, finally,

is undone.

And the fall to the ground wasn’t the pain

Why

you’d begun to grow at all, why you said

yes

for this not at all please don’t believe

random

hand brushing away the grass

the dead

bees.

The fatigue of your release is sweet.

Me,

cupping the split seam of you into my life-

line’s

shadow, the round firm unblemished

you

round , rosy, you’ve come for this: the tongue.  My

tongue.

It’s why you ripen and ripen.  It’s why you rush up

and fall
and split apart to show me your stars.