Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776

Orchard

222 gArnet poems Orchard in memoriam W. K. Crippled by years of pruning, the apple branch bends toward me, and I pick the wizened, fiery fruit you offered years ago, as you were dying. Years, it took, for the fact of your simply not answering to ripen within me. Only now as I sit, pregnant, marooned in tall grass, cross-hatched by October sunlight, with the thunk of apples falling, can I taste your absence. Pale green, acidic. A spurt of saliva quickens the mouth. From the lower field float yelps and laughter of children tussling among hummocks. Their fathers grope higher into the branches, hands stretching to grasp that flecked, streaked russets and McIntosh. Those men are woven into a basketwork of boughs and I am heavy on the ground below surrounded by the bruised fruit and a fermenting glow that rises as apple haze from the weeds. You had no children. But you gave me a painting of apples 223 rosAnnA WArren shrivelled and burning, which I remember now and again, so that I may learn, as you did, how passionately to die. In time, in time. My child stirring within me weighs me down. You have come to meet us through the braided seasons, and I see how, rusting and golden, already we are following you. ...