Frost on fallen apples
Thin sunlight through mist
Early morning autumn
I peer from my darkened room
At the slowly unveiling day
Brooding over coffee…
Over time spent well or not
I have grown old here in the
Ancient Ohio countryside
Home to Coyote, Bald Eagle,
Blue Heron, and Wild Turkey
Two thousand years ago the
Hopewell built a Burial Mound
A brief walk from my backyard
I spot a set of antlers rise above
The mist close to the house
Nearing the apple tree and its
Fermenting carpet of decaying fruit
A young buck with a velvet rack
Emerges as a shadow then takes
Shape with each hesitant step
The sun burns away the last
Of the fog and warms the apples
The frost glistens into dew as the buck
Grazes on the fruit raising its head
Warily as prey animals often do
Its neck and shoulders already filled
With strength and the promise of
Strength to come
Old as I am the tree is older and
Lives wild and uncultivated growing
Into the light, shedding branches in the
Fierce Ohio storms, sheltering birds,
Feeding deer, groundhogs, buzzing
Hornets drunk on the over ripe flesh
Of the abandoned harvest
Later I will rake the bounty into piles
Releasing the pungent scent of decay
Spreading the mash in the flower garden
Just one more animal under a tree
—
Joseph Bocchicchio is a poet whose work has appeared in Cutthroat, Entropy, Panning for Poems, Jawbone, Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Ovunque Siamo, Voices in Italian Americana, and three Edith Chase Symposium Chapbooks: Resurrection River Poems, Rewilding Ohio, and Cuyahoga River Poems. His story, Passing Through, was included in The Healer’s Burden: Stories and Poems of Professional Grief, and was nominated for a Pushcart by The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.
