Planning Ahead,

Planning Ahead,

on Saturday we’ll take the kids

apple picking—it’s early

enough in the season, maybe we’ll be able

to go a few times—into the orchard’s ancient

as cemeteries leaning limbs that  year after year bring us

back to capture what’s not fallen

on the floor of grass at the base of the tree.  We’ve raised

our children this way: to wait

for the sweetness to begin to rise to fight

off that dry meat a sometimes bitter

lingering a sometimes, after the pickling

spices and the alum, I lick finger-

tips and I purse my lips—my grandmother

once told me it was good

for canker sores, alum.   Sometimes I’d

dip my finger in the can, and the wet tip of it

would pull up the white gumpowder, and singe

the open ulcer and grind my teeth.  I don’t

know if it worked but it was enough I trusted

her and remedies tell me aren’t supposed

to be sweet to the edge of deceit if they were

we’d overmedicate instead of dose we’d know

eating all the Courtland’s we can hold is

our only preservation in the glimpse of Eden

we bring our feet to each fall.  I don’t know

the orchard the way the keeper does—But I

know he’s already planning ahead to spring

and several springs, new ground new trees,

the elderly crones slowly going, but so so slowly

and in the heartwood like a grit incased in an oyster’s

wet shellac.  Even if he’s getting on and letting his son’s

son drive the tractor that pulls the trailer

with mounds of hay while other kids reach and bite

and walk in and out of a September October late

late morning early afternoon.  It’s early yet

in the season.  I want to go

this Saturday.  And too another and another.  My

brine’s been boiled for the pickles already.  Let’s

plan on apple butter, let’s plan on summer

being in our mouths in the winter in a blizzard

lets open it to cramp our jaws just by lifting

its lid and putting it under our nose.  Lets!