Apples

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds: juice-green of July rain, the black polestar of flowers, the rind mapped with its crimson stain. The russet, crab and cottage red burn to the sun’s hot brass, then drop like sweat from every branch and bubble in the grass. They lie as wanton as they fall, and where they fall and break, the stallion clamps his crunching jaws, the starling stabs his beak. In each plump gourd the cidery bite of boys’ teeth tears the skin; the waltzing wasp consumes his share, the bent worm enters in. I, with as easy hunger, take entire my season’s dole; welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour, the hollow and the whole.