I live in a house full of scientists it sometimes seems.
And they're always going to or giving
one symposium or another.
And I was feeling very left out, so I
thought I would have a symposium of my own.
This one is in the voices of Eve, Gabriel,
the serpent, and Adam.
And it's called "A Symposium: Apples."
"Eve.
Remember a season of apples, the Orchard full of them,
my apron full of them.
One day, we wandered from tree to tree sharing a basket,
feeling the weight of apples increase between us.
And how your muscles ripened with all that lifting.
I felt them round and hard under my teeth; white and sweet
the flesh of men and apples.
Gabriel.
Nameless in Eden, the apple itself
was innocent-- an ordinary lunchpail fruit.
Still it reddened for the way it was used.
Afterward, the apple chose for itself
names untrusting on the tongue--
stayman, gravenstein, northern spy.
The serpent.
Ordinary, innocent yes.
But deep in each center of whiteness one dark star.
Adam.
In the icebox, an apple will keep for weeks.
Then its skin wrinkles up like the skin
of the old man I have become, from a single bite."