After my dad died, and life
Slowly resumed its seasons,
My sixty year old cousin George
Called, asking for apples.
This was no ordinary request.
My father and I had, for a decade,
Picked apples together each fall,
Which he subsequently delivered,
Driving four tortuous hours
To our tiny Appalachian homestead,
A fundraiser donation for the clapboard
Church, each year whitewashed
Postcard perfect. Here, amongst
Quilts and pies and jams and pumpkins,
Twenty four bushels of our orchard’s
Apples were auctioned each year,
Jonathans and Winesaps, Yorks,
Staymans, Grimes Golden,
And Northwest Greenings.
Some of each, something for all,
Always the finest we had,
Unsprayed, dimpled with dents,
Profoundly imperfect compared
To anything at the grocery store,
Those waxed, chemical cousins.
I cherished them above all fruits,
Crisply tart and sun-warmed,
Small, but golden-sweet,
And so, when George called,
I answered. I knew what to do.
I intuited. I fetched and cleaned
The crates, sweeping away
Cobwebs, caterpillar carapaces,
Forking a ladder between limbs
And picking, six, seven hours,
Stretching, tiptoed, for the farthest
Fruit, cupping each to hand,
Cradling it against bruising,
Bypassing nine of ten apples
As too small, too blemished,
Circumspect in curation,
Until slowly, slowly,
Two dozen boxes brimmed.
The next morning, I drove
My father’s backroads, meeting George
Halfway in Monterey, Virginia,
The last place to compromise
Before the mountains thickened.
His expression, upon seeing the fruit,
Was that of a child receiving a
Birthday card from a rich relative,
And discovering a dollar bill inside.
“What…” he began, trying hard
To stay composed, struggling
With language, taking
Three tries to form the words,
“What… What are these?”
And because it hadn’t fully
Sunk in yet, because at
Almost thirty years old I remained
Dutiful, obeisant, willing,
I assumed there must be
A misunderstanding, and
Fumbled for some fresh beginning.
“They’re your apples,”
I said, knowing at once
I spoke dumbly, plainly, and only
To the vacant air of the
Empty grocery parking lot
Where we had met,
Nonsense words echoing
Against the curvature of sky,
And at this he gathered himself
Tall, reining his disappointment,
Nodding at the diminutive, freckled fruit.
“Oh sure,” he said, clearing his throat.
“They’ll make good cider apples.”
And as though this wasn’t enough,
As though I hadn’t already withered
On the spot, he added,
“But no one would pay for them.”
And as we transferred them to
His truck, each of us silent,
Melancholy, I clearly understood that,
Not yet half his age, I was already
Warped by time, wobbled,
Living some false pretense
Where people ate imperfect apples,
A dimension where I was
A ghost casting cores,
Unnamed saplings springing
From stoney, moonlit orchards,
Dark fruit starring the heavens.
And it wasn’t until
Six months later that I learned,
For all those years, my father
Had been discarding our apples
For deer bait, and purchasing, instead,
Pristine bushels from Washington state,
Passing them off as our own,
The coveted annual entry
Of the local church fundraiser.
That was the first and last time
My cousin ever called me.
Such suffering,
Such knowledge!
Just watch. Willingly, willfully,
We die again, and again.
