Appletrue

Tell the true story of an apple

Tell the truest story you know

Taste the worm

Listen to your listener

 

Listen:

In the Garden

There were no apples

Apples are not indigenous

To Eden

 

 

Not to mention

Genesis in general

In which there are

No apples

 

Not even if

Old King James

Sucked a winesap

Whilst translating

 

Not even if

Eden were a place

Of longitudes and

Latitudes

 

The lassitudes of Evendam

Are not the issue here

Though Eve got a bum rap, no doubt

Original Sin is not in Lady Apple

 

Not in Adam’s apple, not

In Golden Delicious, not

In Granny Smith, perhaps

In Empires? Rome Beauties? Northern Spies?

 

In what distant deeps or skies

Dwelt the maker of them pies?

What of Newton’s Pippin?

Tell the story of an apple

 

An apocryphal story, another one

Full of juicysweet half-truths:

So there was Isaac in repose

Beneath the storied apple tree

 

(indigenous variety) when suddenly

A palpable hit, an applebaumb, such

Red delicious revelation

That gravity

Fell

Downenout

 

Well, as my old man used to say

Just before he bought the farm

Howdya like them apples, junior!

And as I like to say now,

 

Not enough worm, pop

 

So here’s the truest story I know:

I sit pressing these words

Black Calypso pen on yellow legal pad,

The sly sheen of a scarlet Macoun

 

Making mock of me

And black Calypso pens

And legal yellow

And all half-truthful words

 

Ever summoned in the name of apples

While outside my window falls

The fall, just past perfect peak

Come again to Hudson Valley

 

Land of apples, empire of gravity

Holding you and me, dear listener

Original sinners all

Issue of Evenadam

 

Fast in our easy chairs

Straining for love

Bound in fear

Dying to be heard