Random Acts of Poetry: Apple Picking (October 2004)

Random Acts of Poetry

Apple Picking (October 2004)

No one here but trees shedding their apples--
apples hanging like kamikazes, but underfoot mostly.
A battlefield of dead apples, and a mountain
heaped up in the distance, interrupting the sky.

Apples like ruddy people, their dark bruises
soft to the touch, little wounds.
Why pity the fallen; it's too late for them.
The pail fills quickly, a mob of bald heads.

Dogs bark into a shrill wind, and there's a smell
of burning leaves blowing in.
The seller flaunts indifference:
Apples are sold by weight, not perfection.

They ride with me in the front seat.
I eat them, dirty as they are, biting,
throwing the cores out the window, wondering,
in the end, if even their black seeds matter.