Apple-ogia

They are our atonement
for the half-eaten cores

tossed from dusty, finger-
smeared train windows,

sprouted into hoards
of apples, sparkling orbs,

railway siding orchards.
They’re a feast for birds,

burnished rosy and russet,
worm-holed and sweetly

rotting to the fading drone
of wasps drunk on the sadness

of sugar. In spring, wind-fresh
blossoms flutter and fall,

white and pink promises
of autumn’s cider-scented flesh.

Kim M. Russell, 3rd March 2020

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Apple!

This week, Anmol (alias HA) welcomes us to dVerse Poetics and he asks us to think about the modest apple, its histories, mythologies and metaphors, and inculcate some of them in our writing.

To inspire us, he has shared a quote from ‘On Eating and Drinking’ by Kahlil Gibran, and three poems, one by Robert Frost, another by Dorianne Laux, and the last one by Cathryn Essinger.

I took some lines from an old poem and re-worked them into a new one.

29 thoughts on “Apple-ogia”

  4. When hiking, it’s always such a treat to happen upon a deserted orchard or a rogue apple tree. The fruit
    tastes wild and forbidden for sure.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. Thanks Dwight! I’m happy about the apple cores, and any other fruit that might take root, but it’s the other stuff that’s dumped by rail and roadside that bothers me. I can’t understand why people do that.

      Liked by 1 person

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  8. Ah! Such lovely couplets, Kim! The imagery is plain beautiful and the way you’ve told a story of those apple cores thrown away is an inspired way of going about it.
    I loved this bit a lot: “rotting to the fading drone/of wasps drunk on the sadness//of sugar.”

    Liked by 1 person

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  11. A rich perspective of railway siding orchards, Kim! I especially admire this word picture: “sweetly rotting to the fading drone of wasps drunk on the sadness of sugar.”

    Liked by 1 person

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