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Hard and bitter as acorns, the young apples
Cling to the knuckled boughs, surviving hail and bluebottle.
Not yet fruit really, just warts of pulp and pip
Fit more to be thrown than eaten:
Frustrating seedlings, knots of promise.

Two trees the yard held, savannah grass
Slouching on the winds whim. Junes arrival
Brought the apples on, in course sap and summer
To fatten them and blood the skins
Ready for theft or fall or the pigs mouth

When ripe. Though now their cousin
Oaks doppelganger bauble, the nourishing sun
Will feed and feed and cause to drop
To grateful Earth, there to shrink slowly
Like stones on a causeway.