APPLE DOCTOR

Fresh cheeked and white-
haired he leans over
my bare breast and we talk
poems. He writes
a little, a Carlos
Williams. Last week
he watched a neighbor
die, it was cancer. He
blames the farms,
he blames the pesticides.
They killed her for
the money, he says. Weekends

he grows apples,
a dozen organic trees,
he gives the fruit away.
He grafts Granny Smith
on to Gingergold,
nine varieties
on a single tree: Gala,
Grimes Golden, Greening,
Gravenstein—oh
he knows alliteration,
knows about line
breaks—finds

one. The fingers
pause there left of my
nipple. Now

we talk endings
the way a poem
comes like love
to climax, a slow
swelling under the skin
like a maggot
burrowing into the core
and the apple
                          splits.

by Nancy Means Wright                   

Published 2000 in my chapbook, Walking Up Into the Volcano (Pudding House Publications)

© Copyright 2001 - 2011, Nancy Means Wright. All rights reserved.

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