i.
The apple in fact a sickly yellow freckled bronze where death began
its campaign arrows hitting where it lives on the bough death
successful and from those weapons and their men
a victory cry arises  Fallen there in the grass is it meant now
to fulfil its purpose on earth but what is any thing’s purpose  Does a mother’s
for instance arrive when the first wail arrives her own life
ended and she must as apparition live and die again for her child

ii.
A barefooted girl travels the tenuous miles from her childhood
home to her marriage bed  She begins her service dirt scrubbed loose
by her washing meat pounded under her hand boiling of
potato tearing of lettuce  She cuts herself along with the radish her kin
eating recklessly then hurrying away to other affairs leaving her reflected
in bare wet plates  She continues to eat alone small-shouldered
at the table  I turn around as I didn’t then I see her there

iii.
Between a mother and daughter comes a moment of capitulation
When the girl is thirteen the older hands over her beauty
oils leached from her hair entering the daughter’s making it shine
while decay spots the apple-fair flesh of the ma’am defeated despairing
cleaning the mirror to no use her anger increasing  Would this moment occur
in nature the young would either be left to starve in the wilderness
or be killed teeth at the neck by the mother her competitor

iv.
In a painting when all elements are harmonious and feeling
yields to true utterance causing an arrow of recognition to pierce deeply
a stranger  When the colors and composition work as one to frame
that clarity a mathematical rightness called the Golden Mean is achieved
She was capable of deep feeling without art-making  Deer feeding
in the field moved her turkeys rising like quarter notes across the road
Her voice breaks better than poetry when she tells the anecdote

v.
Too shy to work in the world scraping and knitting sacrifice became
her talent yet she hated her home yet it was her realm  She found
liminal pleasure in the blackberries and raspberries that grew wild
in the wood making jellies the kitchen opaque with steam suffused with hot
sugar  She poured great energy into this and when it ended
one year with no announcement she seemed not to mourn it  Her pride
became her children’s accomplishments a kind of self-hatred

vi.
Killed snakes with an axe then chopped wood she roused no sexual
feeling in her husband thus become her own man which meant she was no
longer a wife in the traditional sense  It was when she departed into
a fog she became happiest  How bitterly she wanted
the peace of an hour but a child-sized organ bleated Beautiful Dreamer
somewhere a stain was seeping in  She came with her rag and her listening
with nowhere to go and her children needful

vii.
Sidesaddle on the river’s lamp-lit banks in the City of Lights a bit
apple in one hand in the other a nearly spent cigarette not knowing if I am
choosing life or death the white fruit or black ash  I was taught
by example not to value my own existence meaning I care as much as I can
but this living seems a pretense when the connection to something lost
and sadder seems truer though the decorations could not be more moving
meaning my will to remain on earth is mysterious