“An Exuberance of Apples” by Wendy Donawa
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “An Exuberance of Apples” by Wendy Donawa. Due to its formatting, this poem is only available as an image.
An Exuberance of Apples
By Wendy Donawa
![1.
coastal cottage rental fearsome tides -heaving waves
gusts shudder rain across windows black night moiling
we light candles try to keep the fire going
grill cheese sandwiches on the old wood stove
oh savoury salvation delectable snuggled
on the sagging couch under the old HBC blanket
how sapid slabs of Manchego Camembert Parmesan
and the crisp slice of their apple consorts Gala Ambrosia
that little bite of resistance so piquant
as the heat rises the melting stormed cabin shaking
and shaking but we don’t notice
one sandwich we’ll find in the morning
squashed flat under the cushions
2.
so finally we sit up cross-legged
on the ravenous sheets down the remains
of the apple pie good so good pastry flaking
so tender from its rolling and folding rolling and folding flaking
on our moist skin delicate paté feuilletée
apples sweet tart in their pastry monstrance
slightly crisp tongues and teeth work their juices
syrupy trickle your cinnamon-scented skin
lick up every drop every crumb
3.
bundling into the narrow hall arms full of market bags
we stop to kiss squashed against the door
and the bag dumps apples everywhere
laughing so hard we slid down the wall
as apples rollick all over the floor
where we lie until they calm down
but I bang my elbow something awful on the coat-stand
which fell on us Stygian darkness covering us
with loden coats and puffy jackets as
we consider the apple
for Aphrodite, love’s symbol
for people of the book temptation and downfall
for the Greeks sliced apple as vulva fertility
but the judgement of Paris didn’t end well](https://poets.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/08.-Donawa-Aug-14-2024-web.png)
Copyright © Wendy Donawa
Wendy Donawa spent much of her adult life in Barbados, where she was educated, raised her family, and enjoyed her work as a college instructor and museum curator. She has returned to her Victoria birthplace on the unceded traditional territory of the Songhees and Esquimalt people. Her poems have appeared in magazines, chapbooks, anthologies, and public transport buses; she has read in libraries, bookstores, literary festivals, reading series, parks, and pubs! Her first book, Thin Air of the Knowable, was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and a Gerald Lampert Award finalist. Our Bodies’ Unanswered Questions, her second poetry collection, appeared as one of the Frontenac Quartet (Frontenac House) in 2021.
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