It will soon be apple-blossom season here in our part of the UK. In the Plot #79 Orchard the clusters of blooms are still tight at the moment; with just the dark pink tips showing on the earlier-flowering varieties. The trees are awaiting their moment. As am I, to leap into action with camera and notebook to record their progress through this most vital stage of their annual production cycle.
I think this poem, by Susan Kelly-DeWitt, rather beautifully sums up the orchardist’s sense of winter-long restraint and anticipation, and the feeling of release and freedom that comes with the unfurling of the apple blossom in spring.
Apple Blossoms
One evening in winter
when nothing has been enough,
when the days are too short,
the nights too long
and cheerless, the secret
and docile buds of the apple
blossoms begin their quick
ascent to light. Night
after interminable night
the sugars pucker and swell
into green slips, green
silks. And just as you find
yourself at the end
of winter’s long, cold
rope, the blossoms open
like pink thimbles
and that black dollop
of shine called
bumblebee stumbles in.
I found this rather lovely poem on PoetryFoundation.org, and have posted it here with the very kind permission of the poet, Susan Kelly-DeWitt. ‘Apple Blossoms’ has been recently re-published in the poetry anthology How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, edited by James Crews, and also features in Susan’s latest anthology, Gravitational Tug, which is available via the Mainstreet Rag Bookstore.