Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE APPLE-MAGGOT FLY, by CLARENCE MAJOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE APPLE-MAGGOT FLY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: In a hudson valley


In a Hudson Valley
winter apple orchard,
beneath one apple tree
in a row of apple trees,
snug inside your egg,
inside a rotten apple
hidden beneath red leaves,
you lay abed breathing
your slow larval sleep,
dreaming red,
without reason,
dreaming delicious,
longing too for the lost she
of your own delirious body,
through the long cold season.

Then, as pretty or ugly
as you want to be,
you chew your way
out of your own lace skin,
beginning to dream lover,
mindless of the fall,
mindless
of your puparium
cover -- doing your own
maggot dance.

Larva-headed, cocky
and relaxed, and clear-winged,
you tunnel now into
the living corpse of winter
earth. You proceed where winter
hits with the least amount
of breast-pounding snow,
under the tongue
of a good layer of earth.

And in spring,
(I'm informed)
you are transformed,
(if you survived
the wasps) into
a proud pupa, fit to sit
up, heavy and big
as you're going to get.

All to this end:
to wait quietly
on perhaps the same apple
tree till she sees you waiting
and decides you are the one,
the only one she wants
to catch her ovi.
On the lookout for birds,
and to let other
females know you are spoken
for, she leaves a trail
of her droppings
all around you so they will
know to whom you belong.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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