The First Year We Picked Ev's Apples

for Sarah


November fruit falls on its own. The dogs are in the orchard now,
Carrying off the Blushing Goldens that wouldn't fit in the baskets.
Their eyes follow the dirt-dyed crates
As apples tumble into the press. We throw bruised fruit
At the setting sun. My father's hands are branches,
His back a twisted trunk. Cider is hard work.

My hands blister and burn. We stop and wipe our faces
With the backs of sticky hands. The acre beside ours is silent.
When we finish our gallons it is almost dark. My father crosses the lawn,
Rings the widow's doorbell. I can't read yes or no in her face.
My mother calls us for dinner. My father takes his baskets and dogs,
Heads into the widow's yard.





photograph by Eddie McHugh

For Keeps

"You want me to hurt you. You're
asking me to hurt you. To cut you so deep
it leaves a mark?"
The sunlight is clear but far away.
"A gash," he says, and clutches his ribs.
The trees blow kisses. He stops walking.
She is five paces ahead
before she notices.

She kicks a chunk of broken sidewalk.
Dried maple leaves scrape
across the tops of her shoes. Light
through her ring makes rubies
on the pavement.





photograph by Rob Hodnett

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly ----

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.



Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 - February 11, 1963)
photograph by flickr user scheithelapeyre

When the Witch Ball Breaks

When the ball breaks a fox
finds your best layer and the baby cries
with shining splinters you can't find.

When the ball breaks your shoes
are dusted with powdered glass.
Every step is a challenge
to the feet you have toughened all summer.

When the ball breaks
the window has broken with it.
One wall is gone.
You sleep at the neighbors'.




photograph by Ian Mackenzie
more about witch balls here

Lady Suo's Clavicle: A Corollary

after Lady Suo (11th-12th cent.)

That early fall night
When I woke to find
Your sleeping cheek (warm weight
On my shoulder) may never
Have happened,
But the dream is nearly enough.





photograph by Ani Eleuterio

Tour Jeté

She was stunned at the revolution
of every year. Each time a season turned
she squinted, surprised. Did anyone believe
autumn would come again? And, too,
disorientation—she was alive this time,
this year, reason be damned.

Equinox and warmer light left
her eyebrows floating, dark
in the lake of her forehead.
(The leaves are actually changing,
the April air does feel like that.)




an old poem, revised for 2009
photograph by Alison Scarpulla

The Apartment by the Train Tracks

In summer, when every single thing
sticks to every other thing,
we lie heavy on threadbare bedclothes.

Through the loose window screen, the first note
of a beautiful breeze carries on it
an iron lullaby, a sleepy, solid embrace.

And behind it, stuck to the back window
of the rearmost car, the fallen leaf,
fall's first casualty.



photograph by flickr user Praveen

The View from the Passenger's Side

Down the long driveway: cotton mist.
Across the leaf-stamped street, a gully,
an avalanche of red and yellow,
a rotted canoe on the damp creek bed.

Traffic in upstate New York. The rain
comes quietly, but for miles before them
cars have stopped, in shock, like chickens.
Every radio station spews static. In the driver's seat
he bites his cracked lips, harder
with every braking moment. She wants him
to stop. Off the side of the highway
a mallard sails through slick weeds. He says
he will not stop. The white pill is stuck
in her throat.
The sandy shoulder of the road has flooded.
They get where they are going.

The drive home is blind, the roads reflective,
the stereo silent. She thinks of the hopeful,
abandoned canoe, that by now
it must be drowned.



photograph by flickr user mysimplesundaymorning

Night in the Garden

There are monsters in the garden,
gnawing tomatoes into pulpy lace,
pea pods into twigs. Their pincers
arc, little crescents in the light
of the harvest moon.

The earwigs shy
from the divine fire of my flashlight.
They cling to the stakes as I shake them down
like walnuts.

At the fence I slow my sword of judgment.
The ripe sunflowers hold the day's heat still,
and snug in the heart of the widest lion face,
the bumblebee hums in his sleep.

The night is suddenly so loud, alive
with cries for love and hunger.
The flashlight clicks off beneath my heavy thumb.
I back slowly from the nursery.






photograph by Cassandra Barney

Walking in September

And just when I was sure that I
would never live again the autumn comes.


The earth is round and will never stop spinning.




photograph by Andreas Wolkerstorfer