Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SUITE TO APPLENESS: 3, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SUITE TO APPLENESS: 3, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Or in the orchard that night
Last Line: As an apple.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Apples; Birds; Christianity; Crows; Fruit; Night; Bedtime


Or in the orchard that night
in July: the apple trees too thick
with branches, unpruned, abandoned,
to bear good fruit - the limbs
moving slightly in still air with my drunkenness;
a cloud passed over the moon
sweeping the orchard with a shadow -
the shadow moving thickly across the darkening field,
a moving lustrous dark, toward a darker woodlot.

̺ ̺ ̺

Then the night exploded with crows -
an owl or raccoon disturbed a nest -
I saw them far off above the trees,
small pieces of black in the moonlight
in shrill fury circling with caw caw caw,
skin prickling with its rawness
brain swirling with their circling
in recoil moving backward, crushing
the fallen apples with my feet,
the field moving then as the folds
of a body with their caw caw caw.
Young crows opened by owl's beak,
raccoon's claws and teeth,
night opened, brain broken as with a hammer
by weight of blackness and crows,
crushed apples and drunkenness.

̺ ̺ ̺

Or Christ bless torn Christ, crows,
the lives of their young
torn from the darkness,
apples and the dead webbed branches
choking the fruit;
night and earth herself
a drunken hammer, the girl's head,
all things bruised or crushed
as an apple.





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