Crabapple

     In a plan to pare
     I stared out the window:
     how to make it round
     like the trees on the hillside orchard.
 
     In bed, anticipating
     the outcome, the satisfaction
     of the hauling away,
     I felt the oiled shears in my hands,
     the way I would wield them, so vividly,
     it might have been a dream at night
     in which an entire act
     is carried out to its completion.
 
     On that morning I turned
     to lead limbs
     outlined among gray clouds,
     entered a hazy tunnel,
     unable to follow a branch
     in toward a trunk
     or out to the tips
     without getting lost.
 
     My shears struck 
     resistant wood.
     Each silver twist
     had a twin,
     as though the severed shoots
     kept growing back.
     I waited for instruction
     from the patient
     weight-bearing tree.


     Helena Minton
 	

     
     *         *          *
        

     about the poem:

     "I've been writing poems about gardening recently. I spend so much
     time with words--reading, writing, and in my work as a librarian. 
     Gardening is one non-verbal activity where I actively use my hands. 
     I thought it would be important to explore that.  In one of my  
     poems on this theme, 'Task,' I refer to gardening as 'a way into difficulty.'  
     I think 'Crabapple' is an attempt to come to grips with that notion.   
     The poem is also about perception, how different something looks up 
     close than it does from far away, and about imagining an activity as 
     opposed to actually carrying it out.  I hope, also, if the poem is 
     working, that there is more going on here--the narrator is struggling 
     with something--that I can't quite explain."


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