poetry & what keeps the doctor away.

a better perspiring

through sweeps of heat

the apple speaks

in sweat and green, as the student 

of gravity or the pull of clenched fingers

snapping a branch 

back with a pluck.

bending its way at light, singing through
the hardened lace of its stem--

the apple curves 
in the slow and unseen 

choreography of its own thin skin, knitting
a quiet phonetics into the memory 

and feel 
of the wood 
it left behind.

jrh.