Crab Apple Jelly
A combine mixed the air,
With grass blades and boreen* roads.
I’m reaching up to grasp
That leathered hand below your smile,
And I’m waist-deep in wellies.
A small old coat and a grin coated,
I’m hoisted over the barbed boundary,
To an elderberry, ever-pleasant place.
Cattle nosy over the clints and grikes
Of hard mud and dung.
Shoeless hoofs and hornless heads,
And that old stone wall, alone.
Following the soft trickle of water,
We find our way
To the wild crab apple tree.
The task begins;
What fun this is for me.
I clung to and shook the branch,
Hoping it would not break.
She knew that it would not.
The sap, a surprise,
Like the jelly, I remember.
Apples fell from the heavens.
The leaves breathe relief
As I delight in thuds.
In this tree-topped place,
Guided by, remember, the berries,
Apples, faintly faint, the forest river.
I hung on to every word,
As bees buzzed on buzzing.
Honey-combed over
My bushy head above.
Mom would lend her bucolic wisdom,
To sort the apples apart,
Wash and polish the hard
Mud spots clean.
The summer season
Perfumed the kitchen
Of warm crab apple jelly.
The vinyl crackled
“At Seventeen” by Janis Ian,
Leather aproned, and mist rising
From red bowls too heavy.
The jampots all ready, out,
And bent shelves creaked
As she stirred.
Smoke rose up to her wild glance.
We got a lot.
“It was long ago and far away,
The world was younger than today”,
I see it like a dream.
A tattered old movie in the kitchen.
Now, I wield that wicker basket,
Launch familiar fences,
And climb the tree I once rued to shake.
Reaching, I can get the big apples now,
But I still want her to help.
Boreen — A narrow country road (comes from the Irish word Bóithrín)
*Some of the words of “At Seventeen” by Janis Ian are quoted in the poem and used to frame the scene of my mom making Crab Apple Jelly in the Kitchen — Janis deserves a reference.
