Judith Baumel: Under the Dwarf Apple Tree

I’ll give you ten today and ten
Tomorrow too.

I could give you ten today too and ten,
Ten tomorrow too.

Too much exchange; we’ll keep
Them, then, on the bending boughs.

I gave you this long before I tasted
Its apples and you gave it me.

Pie, crisp, cobbler, fritter 
Donut dumpling darling dearest.

One sneezed and the other sang
As the evening’s heat dissipated.

The feline shriek of the raccoon
And the skunk’s answering perfume.

That made me sneeze
And you did too.

All night your velvet breathing skin
Repeated in my nose and on my skin.
 

From Thorny, copyright 2022 Judith Baumel. Published by Arrowsmith Press.

Judith Baumel’s books are The Weight of Numbers, for which she won The Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets; Now; The Kangaroo Girl; Passeggiate and Thorny. She is Professor Emerita of English and Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University. She has served as President of The Association of Writers and Writing Programs, director of The Poetry Society of America and a Fulbright Scholar in Italy.