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Blue Rivers

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The Last of Summer

The smell of apples
seeps under the bedroom door.
For weeks, hundreds of apples
have sat in brown paper bags on the kitchen floor.
This morning, coddling moth larvae
hung from the kitchen counter on silken strings.
Trying to hold on to summer,
a worm clutches my finger, he clings.

A strong flick of the wrist
loosens his grip–he drops with another shake.
The worms go out with the trash,
the brown soft apples, and stale apricot cake.
The fifteen pints of apricot jam
once seemed like too many,
but after ending up on toast and lamb,
they hardly seem like any.

With no rain this spring to damage the blossoms
the foggy mornings didn’t seem so glum.
The dry season filled our freezer
with an ocean of plum.

Unzip the plastic bag from the cold freezer,
drop a handful of plums into a pot,
cook them in vinegar, ginger, and sugar,
serve them over home grown kale, bubbling hot.

The apples might end up as cider–
we’ve already made two pies with a crisp, buttery crust.
Thinking of the last of summer–apples, plums and apricots–
I hold on to its silken thread with unbridled lust.

November 13, 2007 By Joshua Wait
Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: food, poetry

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Blue Rivers serves up original artwork, photos, and poetry as well as topical essays about art, culture, and the environment.

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