Apple Wine

1

Why do I still think of her voice
as an angel trapped in the soft rain of the shower?

I sit at the window, immobilized
by silence that jelled after she left
for work. The furnace clicks
and expires; air vents tick and the clock
in the kitchen whines like a stuck mosquito.

There are always risks. In love
even success can be stifling, like too much
ease. Soon we will drift
close again, get caught up and lost
as if in the pleasures of a magnetic storm
but for now there is this tough stretch
of patience: winter outside, the apple tree
stranded in deep snow, its trunk mottled
like a thousand year egg, its intimate crookedness
knotted against the glare of a stuccoed wall.

2

The wine's not ready to bottle yet.
It stands in the cellar, breathing
while earth draws the haze from its dubious past.

I can see myself in the highest branches, reaching
for half rotten fruit
tossing them into a plastic bucket
or shaking the tree so crabs will rain
down on the beautitul groundling

who yells at me with her tangy voice
because I forgot to announce
the onset of my two fisted storm
in the boughs, and suddenly
I'm surrounded by yellow-jackets.
They buzz my ears and tumble over my fingers
nipping at brown pulp
and rising heavily into the air.

Once, when I was a boy
they attacked and left me blind
for days, but now their bumpy flights
are openly disorganized
and it's clear that these childhood terrors
(helter-skelter war parties
gone astray in my hair
or stumbling over the knap of my flannel shirt)
have imbibed the spirits of wild yeast
and surprise themselves by melting
into fits of laughter I can't hear.

 

© George Amabile