Apple Spirit

sixth post, a poem about Apple Gathering

This poem is a few years old now and was recommended in Westival International Poetry Competition. I haven't been sending out poetry for quite a while, because on the one hand it takes up a load of time getting a submission together and on the other sometimes rejections just hurt too much. 

I have had two years of grieving having lost two  beloved uncles and now my mum so I have given myself a bit of a break from pushing the poetry out into the world. Can you hear the guilt behind those words? It's there. 

As we tip into late summer very early autumn this feels like the right time to begin settling in to some cosy words of picking fruit and harvesting. When I wrote this poem I was living in a converted barn in the middle of the forest, the farms here plant fruit trees around the fields for people to come and take if they need or want to. That particular year was a bumper year we had cherries, plums, pears and apples of all kinds. I took a bag out with us every day to gather the lands riches. We didn't need to buy jam for years! 

This poem is about finding yourself autumnal, finding lost soul parts through living close to the land. 

Apple Spirit

The day is light, which is not light, 
but still the apples ripen. 
I fill my pockets with brutal red.  

Cleave my chest
as if you were splitting a log.

Inside I am spalted as marble cake.

The frou-frou of life contours
my softened heart like an oil slick.

Apple shamans bring lost parts home. 
 
Outside my clothes are already winter,
a drab code of solitude. 
The colour of sparrow, of safety. 

I offer you my hand, 
white as field mushroom, 
and an apple in swallow-me red. 

You take both like a smash ´n´ grab.