They are walking in the woods along the coast
and in a grassy meadow, wasting, they come upon
two old neglected apple trees. Moss thickened
every bough and the wood of the limbs looked rotten
but the trees were wild with blossom and a green fire
of small new leaves flickered even on the deadest branches.
Blue-eyes, poppies, a scattering of lupine
flecked the meadow, and an intricate, leopard-spotted
leaf-green flower whose name they didn't know.
Trout lily, he said; she said, adder's-tongue.
She is shaken by the raw, white, backlit flaring
of the apple blossoms. He is exultant,
as if some thing he felt were verified,
and looks to her to mirror his response.
If it is afternoon, a thin moon of my own dismay
fades like a scar in the sky to the east of them.
He could be knocking wildly at a closed door
in a dream. She thinks, meanwhile, that moss
resembles seaweed drying lightly on a dock.
Torn flesh, it was the repetitive torn flesh
of appetite in the cold white blossoms
that had startled her. Now they seem tender
and where she was repelled she takes the measure
of the trees and lets them in. But he no longer
has the apple trees. This is as sad or happy
as the tide, going out or coming in, at sunset.
The light catching in the spray that spumes up
on the reef is the color of the lesser finch
they notice now flashing dull gold in the light
above the field. They admire the bird together,
it draws them closer, and they start to walk again.
A small boy wanders corridors of a hotel that way.
Behind one door, a maid. Behind another one, a man
in striped pajamas shaving. He holds the number
of his room close to the center of his mind
gravely and delicately, as if it were the key,
and then he wanders among strangers all he wants. 

we convince ourselves of what we need
allowing obstacle a rebirth as reason

the ground cracks and our body reacts
adjusting balance with footing, ear canal to cochlea

perspective shifts as focus clarifies, position of neck
to spine merges into planet's gyration

we orbit the occipital orb
the eyeball retracted by obstacle's incision

merged into our head our feet, somehow planted
on our eyes, as ground shakes we adjust our view

our heart follows close behind looking for an orbit
to call its own, gravity tells a story . . .

           . . . has falling helped you see how to stand. will melting
             away
          cover improve intuition. porous like mine. I want to fall in
          the nothing. find what's there. challenge my something
          with surrounding nothing. maybe the certain. question the
          maybe. enter the sweat of what falls before I catch it. attach
          impulse to tributary. feather away grass from its skin. remind
          each blade of my pores. my static charge of light and dusk.
          magnetize distress. vanish emblems of pointed
             palmistry           
          paining hull. esperanza savior. salivant sonority. have you
          instincted the instants yet. stepped in line. what is the water
          like when followed unwillingly. when skin is checked
          by the surface of surround. the speed of slow.
          who gets wet in the blade of water that cuts the wake.
          is there friction with a name for blend. do I remove the
          image before it envelops. rescue the outcome before it lands.

I will eat the apple
read Stephen’s note this morning.
He is volunteering to play Eve.

He wrote, I will eat the apple
—but there are no apples in the house.
We have no lascivious Honeycrisp,

no bonny Braeburn, no upright Baldwin.
We’re out of spry Granny Smiths,
the skulking Northern Spy,

or the mysterious Pink Lady.
Stephen does have an Adam’s apple
and I have an Apple computer,

but you can’t compare apples and oranges.
The note said, I will eat the apple.
Perhaps Stephen’s chasing out the doctors.

Perhaps he’s not falling far from the tree.
Or he’s already eaten from the tree of knowledge:
in Latin, malum means both apple

and evil. I think Stephen is sending a warning.
He means, I will protect you.
He writes, I will eat the apple.

^{translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti}

                                         I.
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
A-top on the topmost twig, which the pluckers forgot, somehow,—
Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.

                                         II.
Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found.
Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound,
Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. 
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, 
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; 
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon. 

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; 
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, 
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; 
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, 
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold. 

We were very tired, we were very merry, 
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. 
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head, 
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; 
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears, 
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

It’s fall, season of the apple—iconic
fruit of this America, mounds of excess
littering the grounds of orchards
from want of migrant hands to pick
the harvest clean: their red the banner
of every girl or woman who tips her head up
to the knowledge of her power—which means
she can see the way things work in the world,
and chooses not to be shamed any longer
for calling it. For what did the hissing
in the leaves tell her that she didn’t
already know, or the laughter behind
closed doors when she ran, groping
her way out? Don’t pretend you don’t
know what I want, said every snake
in the grass. Survival means no one
dies, but someone is forced to take
the fall: the smallest bird, the lowest
fruit—though the fruit isn’t to blame
for its sheen, nor the star for marking
the place where its light was last seen.