Apples

1.
The grackles keep their distance. Sharp-
winged complainers, they sideways
out of reach.
If I could touch them I would
say bone-light. I would call them warm.
If I could hold one I could smell one.
I would call it wing-sharp, I would call
the smell a name like marrow.

2.
Again. The old man rakes his yard. Again,
the slick sacks of leaves impenetrable as cairns,
the symmetry of them, how countable they are.
He is making progress.

3.
a grocery list, the words for food
so perfect, so three
bananas, so
soup,
so orderly and strange, so
apples
that I have to write it twice,
apples,
maybe three times

Copyright © 2006 Meagan Evans All rights reserved
from Black Warrior Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission