The Basket of Apples If there were snakes that day they let us be, in peace to wade the sea of meadow grass and fern. We found the orchard creekside, overgrown, the old church rotting and one by one the apples. Seedlings sprouting from the dung of mule deer, a narrow path mapping the sweetest fruit. We didn’t plan it, didn’t ask to be born on this tilted plane, for river shadows pulling everything we love from the sky. The lower branches already cleaned, I pointed, shielding my eyes as you climbed the rustling fabric of the leaves, toward the perfect Blue Pearmain, and when it gave, leaves and all, a dozen more rained down, screeching kestrels in the cottonwood. Our laughter playing off the marble cliffs became the sound of water, the colours of the trees. Kelly Houle This poem was first published in Radar Poetry. Kelly Houle’s poems have been published in Alba, CALYX, Connecticut River Review, Crab Orchard Review, Kenyon Review, Radar Poetry, Sequestrum, and others. She was a finalist for the Arts and Letters ‘Unclassifiable’ contest and winner of a 2023 Vivian Shipley Award. She is also a painter.
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November 2024
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