It was a lovely,
Almost a perfect
Apple tree.
For fifty years
Or maybe a hundred
It stood.
From grace of slender youth
Bright-with-blossom
Green wood
Pruned by hand of man
To shapely vigor
Receiving the sun.
Fifty or a hundred springtimes
Kissed by virgin bees
To fructify:
In sweet-smelling scarlet curtains
Redolent of every tree
in Eden;
In golden ooze from the comb
Its sweetness bringing to mind
The Law;
In candles carrying prayers
Sweet smoke drifting before
The Tabernacle.
I knocked upon your door
To ask if I might glean
Your tree.
I and my children, who know
Why it was God made
The apple,
Wanted to glean the tree
Left by a long dead homesteader
In your yard,
Still standing like a grandma,
Alone but hopeful, waiting,
Baking treats.
I knocked, but I suppose
Over the throbbing, pounding, numbing “music”
You couldn’t hear.
When next we passed, the tree
Was gone; a circle of dirt
In her place.
And I just wanted to ask,
What you could have found,
You philistine,
More valuable than a lovely,
Almost a perfect
Apple tree.
