For the Birds

by Patricia Karamesines

She picks soft apples from a flowered bowl.

“Meant to use these, never got to it,”
she says. “Oh, well!” Four—no, five—she takes
them to the door, throws them through as far
as she can onto crusted snow. “Such waste.”

But I’m not fooled. I tell her, don’t feed wildlife.
They say the wild things lose their fending for
themselves. Or worse, become destructive. “Eh!”
she says. She waves me off. “Mebbe,” she says,
“something to that last one—true for bears—
true for people who are brutes like bears—
but they, those they, they say that same of all
impoverished souls—handouts ruin them. Any
those things at all, they happen only ’cause
you go Lawrentian on the creatures, exploit
their need and presence to glut your own thin nerves,
twanging for touch and bridling. Animals like
to do for themselves. Good times, they will. They don’t
come looking here. Too risky. Important thing?
Don’t ever ask for something in return.”

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Apple by Patricia Karamesines

Michael, think of an apple, how its taste
saturates all memories of first fruit.
Probably before you grasped the word, €œapple, €
a pome caught hold of you, flavor and firm body
biting through your thin skin.
Don’t you still recall €œapple € by charms
more defined, more seasoned,
more round ripe than the word?
Agitation by a few grains from another blossom,
bulb of pale flower swollen in streams of light,
it bobs for weeks in the weather, distilling.
It sweetens in cool cellars of the moon.
It shapes into all that you remember:
Taste verging on fragrance; crisp, wooden meat;
and color like you like to imagine a heart has €”
life-red and glistening, wet.
Your hand is no stranger to apple-hearts.
Somehow that clarifies what your mind knows,
apple not just as word but as living full savor.

Michael, don’t carry in pocket the word only;
keep the whole fruit ever at hand.
Nor should you rely upon the name,
an apple doesn’t answer to its name.
Nor do we, but to the quick of the season,
immanent, juicy, red-freckled, standing our senses
on edge, now.   Forget the word, €œapple. €
From such vagaries people walk away hungry.
With out-held words and ripe, swaying language,
make apples to fill the brain’s deep belly, having first
weighted your own hand, cupped your own palm.

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Patricia Karamesines lives with her family in the Four Corners region of the southwestern U.S. She has won many awards for her poetry, essays, and fiction. She is the author of The Pictograph Murders, a mystery set in the area where she lives. An adjunct English professor for Utah State University-Eastern, she teaches English composition and also works as a tutor for English. She is founding editor of Wilderness Interface Zone and a passionate advocate for the environment of human expression.

This poem was originally published on WIZ on February 2, 2011. But I thought it fit here, with other language posts, maybe a little better.

This is a GREEN LANGUAGE post.

Athanasia by Patricia Karamesines

I would say I feel cold but no
that’s not right. I feel dark.
Winter has begun glooming bone
half so bright with fire as once cheered.
This arm and shoulder upon which I fell—
they make a rough fit.  Especially
I feel it there. My eyes rummage
squat days for gleams. In my chest
there’s a catch, as if these lungs
lose appetite, thin instants off each breath.

Spring wells up almost too late,
me panting for light.  Then with summer
the full gasp at last revives
one more solstice in the blood.

During my high and thieving youth,
I gorged on sun’s confections—cherries,
peaches, apples—climbing to the high reaches
among the wind’s fits and passions.

Now I hoard against the lightshed
of winter equinox fruit
others pick.  But these run out
and the sun gets no better.
Oblique, if not of its own angle,
from slants of storm.

When we think of resurrection,
(and we must think of it—
science writhes from that grave
cocoon toward winged athanasia),
should that day of first glory break
on winter’s dawn and I by some
unforeseen chance am called,
I shall not answer by any name.
There will not be enough holy apples
growing in God’s green mind to give me rise.
Sweetest science could not coax me
past the thin, grey snows.

But for whatever glory ascends summer’s spire,
with the wisdom of a potato in a root cellar,
my strands will feel end and beginning
bind up my spine and the earth lurch beneath wing
beats of swallows working airy theorems
across the blue board. “That,” I will say,
“that is the word I lay wanting.”
And up I’ll come from must with earthwise toads.

[Edited 12/21/2013 to remove introduced formatting symbols and to update the version.]

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Patricia and her family live in the Four Corners region of the southwestern U.S. She has won many awards for her poetry, essays, and fiction. She is the author of The Pictograph Murders, a mystery set in the area where she lives. Some of her poetry appears in the recently published landmark anthology of Mormon poetry, Fire in the Pasture. An adjunct English professor for Utah State University-College of Eastern Utah, she teaches English composition and also works as a tutor for English. She is founding editor of Wilderness Interface Zone. This version of “Athanasia” is a recent re-write.

There’s Nothing Like an Apple by Mark Penny

There’s nothing like an apple
Not a thing
In summer, fall, millenium or spring
The crisp, collapsing clutter in the mouth
Wet sugar squirting east, west, north and south

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To read Mark’s other Spring Poetry Runoff Competition entries, go here and here.

*Competition entry*