Apples

706 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Apples The apples are bitter, the orchard haphazard. Half-eaten blackened cores lie like bones in a graveyard. No one to prune the trees and the fruit frozen. Brutal and tortured, the snowy limbs bend. In the ice the sour fruit glitters. The apples are bitter. Winter bees feed in the glassed honeycomb. Dead wasps have abandoned their paper dome home. Once Adam had the word and Eve had the apple, then the snake gave free will to the first couple. The edge of the orchard and the edge of paradise are bitterjust so, these apples, too, are bitter. VALERIE WOHLFELD ...