Forrest Pritchard's Blog, page 4

Apology To A Wren (#43)

To the wren I disturbed,

Asleep in the porch eaves,

Bundled snug beneath

A November pumpkin moon,

I’m sorry, little bird,
To send you scrambling
Against a white, wooden sky
With frantic, futile resolve.

You ignored the open squares

Of night all around,

As though you were blind

To the very air itself—

Freedom too spacious,
Too expansive, convinced that
What you could not see
Surely meant it must not be.

Harmless Regrets (#42)

The Osage orange has been

Losing its mind,

Throwing brain-shaped fruits

At passing cars,

Painting the asphalt chartreuse.

It happens each autumn,

Days of harmless regrets—

Gardens unplanted, mornings missed,

Summer stored in sweater drawers.

Along the lane,

On a gate post,

A squirrel has hung a walnut

Hull, neatly as a cap on a peg.
Its uncrushable shell,
Broken in bits. The frozen
Light is too bright to be borne.

Wild Man in Suburbia (#41)

When I was a boy, on Halloween,
Trick or treating meant bypassing
The authentic, haunted farm houses
Of my rural community, spaced

Unwalkable half miles distant,

Windows black as skull sockets,

Their spiderwebbed porches unlit,

Graveyard yards unwelcoming.

Instead, I was driven twenty five

Minutes to the nearest subdivision,

Brightly lit with festive windows,

Flickering flames of jack-o-lanterns,

Dropped off with friends to chaperone

Ourselves through the groomed streets,

Until our pumpkins overflowed with candy,

Or eight o’clock—whichever came first.

“Did you hear,” a passing kid warned,

Breathing hard, voice urgent

Behind an Incredible Hulk mask,

“There’s a wild man out tonight!”

A wild man! We turned to one another.

What could it mean? We never feared

The razor blades hidden within

Fresh apples, mostly because

We never received any apples.

Even blindfolded, we knew that the

Bowls of eyeballs were peeled grapes,

The swallowed goldfish, canned peaches.

But a wild man was something new,

Foreboding. We walked cautiously,

Clustered tight, nervous as costumed

Chickens, clucking our misgivings.

And so, when an hour later the wild man

Leaped, roaring from the shadows,

Rushing towards us, all I saw was

Horror, murder, death, darkness,

Halloween’s promise fulfilled, and I ran,

Losing my friends, my way, my mind,

Sprinting, if I could have, all the way home

To those sweetly haunted farm houses,

While behind me, my friends now
Undoubtedly slain, butchered into chunks,
The wild man raised gore-spattered claws,
Threw back his gruesome head, and howled.

Galileo & Eggs (#40)

Sorting eggs with my son,

Listening to a twenty eight minute

Biography of Galileo Galilei,

Who raked the ashes of Aristotle

Over the coals of Ptolemy until

The Catholic church couldn’t help

But notice. A freckled egg,

Cupped in my palm, curving

Inward, sac, albumen, yolk,

Scintilla speck of embryo,

Brain, blood, programatic,

Geometric physics of biology—

Galileo, however, looking outward,

Told the priests, the inquisitors,

“You’re right. This is all just

My opinion. Can I go home now?”

Meanwhile, as he spoke,

His manuscript, banned in Rome,

Was being smuggled off to

Amsterdam for publication.

Back in Virginia, I teach my boy

To pack the eggs into dozens,

A legacy of Roman lucre,

When perhaps ten would make

More sense. Later, staring skyward,

A dozen stars. A thousand!

Jesus, Galileo. I just want to hear

That song by the Indigo Girls.

October Light (#39)

Where I backed the silver trailer
In the autumn rain, pressing close
To oak boards once painted black,
The wooly longhorn turns his head

To enter the vacant space,

Stepping into cool darkness.

Nearby, buttressed with stilt grass,

Panicles of pink knotweed,

The tomb of the ground spider,

Diurnal shroud decorated with fallen

Sugarnut leaves, funneling light.

The rain taps the pale gauze, and,

Deep within the coiled cold

The hungry mouth moves, twitching—

If it had a slavering tongue, surely

It would lick its dripping, ebony fangs.

Cider Apples (#38)

After my dad died, and life

Slowly resumed its seasons,

My sixty year old cousin George

Called, asking for apples.

This was no ordinary request.

My father and I had, for a decade,

Picked apples together each fall,

Which he subsequently delivered,

Driving four tortuous hours
To our tiny Appalachian homestead,
A fundraiser donation for the clapboard
Church, each year whitewashed

Postcard perfect. Here, amongst

Quilts and pies and jams and pumpkins,

Twenty four bushels of our orchard’s

Apples were auctioned each year,

Jonathans and Winesaps, Yorks,
Staymans, Grimes Golden,
And Northwest Greenings.
Some of each, something for all,

Always the finest we had,

Unsprayed, dimpled with dents,

Profoundly imperfect compared

To anything at the grocery store,

Those waxed, chemical cousins.

I cherished them above all fruits,

Crisply tart and sun-warmed,

Small, but golden-sweet,

And so, when George called,

I answered. I knew what to do.

I intuited. I fetched and cleaned

The crates, sweeping away

Cobwebs, caterpillar carapaces,

Forking a ladder between limbs

And picking, six, seven hours,

Stretching, tiptoed, for the farthest

Fruit, cupping each to hand,
Cradling it against bruising,
Bypassing nine of ten apples
As too small, too blemished,

Circumspect in curation,

Until slowly, slowly,

Two dozen boxes brimmed.

The next morning, I drove

My father’s backroads, meeting George

Halfway in Monterey, Virginia,

The last place to compromise

Before the mountains thickened.

His expression, upon seeing the fruit,

Was that of a child receiving a

Birthday card from a rich relative,

And discovering a dollar bill inside.

“What…” he began, trying hard

To stay composed, struggling

With language, taking

Three tries to form the words,

“What… What are these?”

And because it hadn’t fully

Sunk in yet, because at

Almost thirty years old I remained

Dutiful, obeisant, willing,

I assumed there must be

A misunderstanding, and

Fumbled for some fresh beginning.

“They’re your apples,”
I said, knowing at once
I spoke dumbly, plainly, and only
To the vacant air of the

Empty grocery parking lot

Where we had met,

Nonsense words echoing

Against the curvature of sky,

And at this he gathered himself
Tall, reining his disappointment,
Nodding at the diminutive, freckled fruit.
“Oh sure,” he said, clearing his throat.

“They’ll make good cider apples.”

And as though this wasn’t enough,

As though I hadn’t already withered

On the spot, he added,

“But no one would pay for them.”

And as we transferred them to

His truck, each of us silent,

Melancholy, I clearly understood that,

Not yet half his age, I was already

Warped by time, wobbled,

Living some false pretense

Where people ate imperfect apples,

A dimension where I was

A ghost casting cores,

Unnamed saplings springing

From stoney, moonlit orchards,

Dark fruit starring the heavens.

And it wasn’t until

Six months later that I learned,

For all those years, my father

Had been discarding our apples

For deer bait, and purchasing, instead,

Pristine bushels from Washington state,

Passing them off as our own,

The coveted annual entry

Of the local church fundraiser.

That was the first and last time

My cousin ever called me.

Such suffering,

Such knowledge!

Just watch. Willingly, willfully,

We die again, and again.

Wild Persimmon (#37)

The wild persimmon,

Fruited, awaits. Present

With each other, our plans

Are soon forgotten.

Purple iron weed, browning

At the pasture’s edge,

Blithely nods.

Is it autumn, again?

Difficult, to remain intent!

Even monks must chime a bell,

A chorus to remind

That breathing is helpful.

Lone Elm (#36)

I asked an old friend to

Help me identify a tree

I had never seen before,

And I think we were both

Surprised when she said

—Hesitatingly at first, then

With cautious wonder—

“I… I want to say it’s an elm,”

Both of us knowing it

Defied logic, odds,

Aware of how the disease

Had arrived long ago, killing

Ninety nine thousand

Nine hundred and ninety nine

Elms for every one remaining,

As here, rooted, solitary. Alive.

Who knows how?

How we stay friends,

I mean, knowing what

We think we know,

That life goes on,

So busy, so bothered, so

When the phone rings,

And the voice, carefully

Composed, bridging

Distance, decades,

Cracks—In a single syllable,

Our world falls, fathomless,

While the lucky elm, miraculous,

Feels the sun on its leaves,

The rain on its roots, and,

Missing no one, misses nothing.

Cloud Shapes (#35)

September, spaciously

Spidered, appled,

Gleaming, as though

We could see the air—

Eyes lifted, recalling

Third grade clouds, the ones

We drew fluffy and puffy and never

Quite white, crayons melting

Through blue construction paper.

After school, laying on the

Lawn with my aunt, eighty four,

The one who knew a one-legged

Civil War drummer boy, September

Clouds taking any shape they

Pleased, she pointed:

“That one’s a tea kettle,” and

“There’s a bowler hat.”
Bless my aunt. She never said
“Look, a clock, spinning
Backwards. Wait, forwards!”

Or, “There! Pages

Torn from a calendar, tossed

Against the autumn sky!”

Those daily dull aches

Everywhere, always, anyway,
Enough of these shapes—
She saw, instead, bicycles,
Elephants, and birthday cakes.

Avocado (#34)

The first time I ever

Really noticed anything

—That is to say, that I

Noticed I was noticing—

Was on a commuter train

In California, age 25, traveling

To visit an aunt, when,

Katy-corner to me, at a

Table-seat that faced backwards,

A man opened a crumpled paper

Sack and produced, from within,

A plastic knife, a plastic spoon,

And one large avocado.

Don’t laugh—I had never seen

An avocado before,

Didn’t know what it was,

Having grown up on frozen
Pot pies, hot dogs, begging
My mother for nine piece
Amalgamated poultry from McDonalds;

And if California was exotic,
That avocado seemed otherworldly,
Ovoid, olivine, bumpy as
Dinosaur hide. I watched clandestinely

As the man sliced it lengthwise,

Orbiting his palm,

Cleaving the fruit like a geode

To reveal the most unexpected

Green I had ever seen,

Not mint, not lime, but

Bright like spring clover,

Creamy as fresh milk,

And within, as though

A world awaited, an enormous,

Perfectly round pit,

A globe, profound,

Which he neatly removed,

Scooping it loose and dropping it,

Nonchalantly, into the sack.

My eyes were wide!

See, how he sprinkled the salt!

See, how he ladled the green meat

To his mouth, sweetly eating!

When he was done, scraping the

Shells for the final, curling petals,

I could have gone on watching,

From California to West Virginia—

The width of the world, in a paper bag.