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A Pair of Apple Poems

1.
One apple was left in the poetry workshop snack basket. It was frosted with wax. Pale yellow flakes buckled its skin the way aspen leaves freckled the dry grass. The apple leaned to one side as if to better hear the silent musings, the scraping of the poets’ pens, as if a fruit could be plumped up by raw ink or could mysteriously feed on the magic of words and fidgeting dreams. Maybe the apple wanted to write a life of its own and fall far from the tree of its beginning.

The noise of the poets was strangely reassuring to the apple. Shrewdly musical, their rhythms reminded the apple of when, in its youth, it had danced with abandon, profoundly shaken by the click of branches fencing with the wind. Although those biting storms in the nights of its forming terrified the apple to its core, the grating sounds of the poets now flooded the apple with a cinnamony sense of warmth and comfort. This apple, picked to sell before it could find the ground on its own, now lay cool and quiet in my hand.

Packed with the hidden power of sunlight, its sweetness a little too green, firmly and fully imperfect, this pome draws me out of my longing. I can tell by how its seeds like worms find my mind dark and fertile as an old horse pasture, this apple still thinks it is falling. After enduring the rough passage of its short life and the assiduous gnawing of my mouth, it falls into my blood.

 
2.
An apple fell on Einstein’s head. It puzzled him. Gravity had already been discovered. Matter and energy had been seen only yesterday leaving the cheap motel together. So what of this knock on his melon? Was God just checking if his mind was ripe? Was it the routine ringing of a cosmic alarm clock reminding him to be awake? Were the Fibonacci stars that crosscut the apple’s seeds plotting to plant their pervasive patterns in the gray furrows of his grateful brain?

Although I am sure he grasped the full gravity of the event, Albert shyly released a half smile as if he were mildly entertained. It was the reluctant, yet irrepressible, grin of a man amused and relieved at the same time. “Somethings go better unnoticed,” he was heard to say. This was disappointing for the apple, who had received only the smallest bylines for the force equally exerted on Newton’s noggin. Yet, Einstein knew the fingerprint of interconnection when it pressed down on him. If nothing else made sense, it seems apples are always falling.

Albert took it as a compliment. He kept the apple, pared it for lunch, and so laid bare its core, prematurely exposing the tender vessels of the next generation and its seeping nectar to the persistent browning of his breath.

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from Into Light: The Poems of M. D. Friedman, released January 1, 2024

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Mad Dog Friedman | Mad Dog Blues | Peddlers of Joy image

Mad Dog Friedman | Mad Dog Blues | Peddlers of Joy Lafayette, Colorado

Mad Dog writes from the moment and sings from his heart. His influences include sources as divergent as William Butler Yeats & the delta blues. His songwriting is sincere, simple & often humorous. He has recorded many solo & collaborative projects featuring his spontaneous compositions on harmonica, Native American flute & Theremin. He is also the founder of Mad Dog Blues & The Astral Project. ... more

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