Ahhh, these are rather depressing poems and I am sorry if they seem so, but I thinking of the change in season and these popped up.
THE APPLE TREE
I looked at the apple tree today,
the one the storm did not take,
and saw it still full of apples,
mottled, green/red fruit, some
rotted through with ants eating
at the brown-turning flesh
and I thought of the last months
and what was ripening inside you
and we still didn’t know….
when your breasts were like
the now ripening apples,
globes of heaviness, topped with brown nipples,
they lay in my cradling hands warm with life
and I could feel them pulse,
the river inside still flowing.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2008
SEASONS CHANGE
I took a walk this morning,
The season has changed here
Though where you are they don’t.
The dried, brittle grass beneath my feet
Made a consistent crackle,
Echoed by the gossip of sparrows above.
The leaves are gone now from the birches and maples.
They fell like rain on a fallow ground one day
And I didn’t see them go.
I think of your rounded arms
when I see the Shedding birches,
the smooth bark like White skin
with a faint pulse of the river beneath.
Do you remember the river,
where it scared you to stand close to the bank?
You thought the earth would slip inward and
Take you on a wild ride downstream where
I couldn’t retrieve you,
And I saw for an instant your raised arms to me,
imploring me silently to save you,
though it never happened
and you never slipped down the bank and I never could save you.
But imagination plays with your mind
when it is all you have left.
jane kohut-bartels
copyrighted, 2008
Tags: apple trees, death, love, poetry, season's change
September 23, 2008 at 1:42 am
It is the time of year…everything around us is winding down, dying back, preparing to slow down to a crawl for the cold winter months. It is a perfectly natural phenomenon, and accepting that is the first step to feeling better.
We can’t hibernate like bears, but everything else about us gears us to slow down and, in essence, hibernate until spring brings us out again, to bloom, grow and be active again. The slow times give us the opportunity to write, paint, think, evaluate, and establish a goal for the coming spring. Planning next year’s garden, simply reviewing and appreciating where we have come in the past year, or month is worth of the time we spend on it.
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September 23, 2008 at 2:21 am
you got it…now..where is my fecal plug?? (like the bears)…
LOL@
Jane
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