After Apple-Picking

...Get it? Cuz I'm studying poetry, and that's, like, a famous poem!

I'm sure one of us will someday blog about, you know, school. But for now, I'd like to talk about the fact that there is a small orchard of apple trees here on the Pilgrims grounds, six of which are presently bearing, four of which are presently bearing well -- crisp, juicy, tart-enough-for-baking, sweet-enough-for-snacking, big, rosy, beautiful apples.

So every few days, Kathleen or I take a shopping bag down to the orchard. Sometimes we bring a camera. Sometimes we bring a friend with a camera. Click to enlarge.

We eat them in sandwiches...

(mayo, horseradish, ham, apple, Brie, sauteed leek)

...in salads...

(spinach, honey-mustard vinaigrette, chickpeas, apple, 
boiled egg, smoked mackerel, crumbled Blacksticks bleu 
and cranberry-Wendsleydale cheeses)

...and, of course, in pastry.

(pie.)

I love picking apples (and peaches, and pumpkins, and berries, and corn, and rosemary, and and and, ad infinitum [NON ad nauseam]). I wrote the following poem a couple months ago; it gets all philosophical or whatever on the subject of trees and fruit. But deep down I'm just flat-out awed by the fact that green leafy things grow up out of the dirt and make flowers that turn into tasty, nourishing food.

Reparation

If you wake
(or dream) to find
your house harboring
a tree trunk
—like a rough sticky pillar
placed by a drunken architect
smack-in-front of the fridge door,
perhaps, or snugged in the crook
of the Steinway, ruining 

the high notes
or precisely between the sitting room sofas,
necessitating awkward
tilts of the head
when company calls to converse—

do not cut it down

(or out or away). Instead enjoy

the scent, the texture,

the surprise of still life.

Maybe if you’re lucky

the creaks you hear in the night

will be the tree 
beginning

to bear the dead wood weight

of floorboards and beams,

gathering and lifting them up onto tiptoe

until at last the whole house

leaves earth

for that slow green ride

toward the sun.
More likely,

the results will be just

disastrous: black roots cracking

your foundation while branches
tangle in rafters
and the widening trunk drips

a slow rain of broken plaster into your hair—

all as leaves press their broad faces

against your window panes

like a gang of laughing children.
Because trees don’t know how

(or when or why)

to stop.
They grow and grow and grow until
they die. But 
it’s the least you can do
to let it so grow—that old stolen apple 

left more than human
skin naked. When the first chill
dropped, what must the robbed

tree have thought

when its bark split

its sap sludged
and before their final fall
its leaves stiffened one by one—
it not having eyes
to see the rainbow glow
the feather flight

of their death?