The prompt for today was to write a tiny love poem. I'm still stuck on the discovery I made yesterday -- that Gravenstein Apples (the apples that Sebastopol, the town I'm from and am currently writing about) are originally from Schleswig (what is now Northern Germany). They were brought there from Italy by Prince Carl von Ahlefeldt then planted in orchards around the castle. A century later, some of the Gravensteins were brought to Fort Ross (near Jenner) and were later introduced to the Sebastopol area where they took off as a crop. So, my love poem is about apples and an old cemetery near where I live called Pleasant Hill. Here is my draft. This project is turning out to be so much fun. I think it's going to be hard to doing else but write poems all month!
Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Sebastopol, CA
The old gravestones are tiny granite-tongued
love poems covering the dead who now
mix with the soil they once plowed and planted.
And all around the air-bound apple blossoms
still powder the air with possibility.
The arthritic trees that surround in straight
dirt rows are still fruit bearing. These days
children steal their delicate branches with
little cost (no more beatings from farmers
who saw what each blossom would become).
The children pluck the tiny white blossoms, carry
them carefully in their palms to the creek
where the blossoms float: white, barren fairies
in the still, black limestone bedded pool.
