Cider

(poem)

This poem recently came out in Orchards Poetry Journal. It was originally part of a much longer poem that just wasn’t working. I eventually figured out that I had two conflicting structures of metaphor which were colliding irreconcilably, so I spun off two quite different poems from the original. Looking at this poem and the other (entitled Out Rowing with Shakespeare and Frost) you would never think that they had once been part of the same poem. That’s because the shouldn’t have been! Looking back, I now can’t conceive how I ever could have thought they went together. I suppose that the lesson for me is that if my creative process made any sense, it wouldn’t be a creative process.

	Cider

The trees loose leaves, a fruit for eyes alone
as interest on a promissory spring,
drop their coppers till the world is warm
and all their debts are paid with ripening. 
The forests bank their vigor for the night;
their sap flows slowly down to level rest;
all fruit is tallied, and a calm descends.
The business of the busy year is past.
But see how Autumn spends her gain:
in scarlet, bronze and cymbal-gold
she warms the eye and chills the hand;
her apples sweeten in the cold; 
she gives her cider sacrament to all, 
which beats through presses like the blood of fall.

Note: I’ve had several people comment that the first line didn’t make sense. “Loose” is the verb here, in the sense of “release.” Yeah, that’s somewhat archaic. So shoot me (but use a crossbow to keep things antiquated.)

Also, I’ve long admired how Shakespeare used terms from the world of business and commerce in his poems and verse plays. Anything can be “poetic” if handled properly, and Shakespeare was a master, of course. And this is a sonnet (although only half-rhymed), something else which I find challenging to do but at which Shakespeare was a master. Here I decided to try my hand; how did I do? (Don’t answer that!)