July 3rd Sunday Write In August: Worm Laden Apples

First off it’s late again, the Bloomington Writers Guild Third Sunday Write (cf. June 29, et al.), both for getting the prompts but also for my post. That is, I did post on Facebook July 28, at least the right month, but with much more interesting things going on, I haven’t gotten around to it for the bloggo until now.

So anyway, herewith, not one of my best. I love the way the prompts are handled, giving us in effect our choice of one out of four, as opposed to the “live” pre-COVID version where we’d stab at all of them, even if only one really “spoke” to us. Though one might argue, of course, that that’s the point — to find inspiration of some sort in anything that is offered.

But back to business, this is the July essay, the prompt being a poem from which we were to select just one line.

4. The Sunday Poem: “I Would Like” by Jane Hirshfield,
— “inhabit a fig or apple”

But what DOES inhabit a fig or apple? I close my eyes, see subdivisions in trees, split-level figs? Apple ranchettes? Does homeowners insurance cover picking? A surreal world, maybe, but in real-world apples aren’t actual inhabitants generally worms? I recall, for instance, an old joke from childhood: What’s worse than biting an apple and finding a worm? The answer: To find half a worm. But now are we to worry, we who eat the apple, about finding families, young couples inhabiting starter apples, moving up when the first wormlets arrive? Big apples. Small apples. Fitting all families. Or can, for a premium, one still find vacant fruit, new neighborhoods hung on freshly built branches? Such are life’s great mysteries — though, as for figs, I’ll say I don’t eat them that much.