“Apple Thieves” by Beverley Bie Brahic (poetry ’06)
An excerpt from “Apple Thieves” by Beverley Bie Brahic (poetry ’06), published by The New Yorker.
Apple Thieves
In his dishevelled garden my neighbor
Has fourteen varieties of apples,
Fourteen trees his wife put in as seedlings
Because, being sick, she wanted something
Different to do (different from being sick).
In winter she ordered catalogues, pored
Over subtleties of mouthfeel and touch:
Tart and sweet and crisp; waxy, smooth,
And rough. Spring planted an orchard,
Spring projected summers
Of green and yellow-streaked, orange, red,
Rusty, round, wormholed, lopsided;
Nothing supermarket flawless, nothing imperishable.
Gardens grow backward and forward
In the mind; in the driest season, flowers.
