Poem: Eulogy to Blasberg's Farm

 

Apple Trees in Blossom - Paul Gauguin 1879

Eulogy to Blasberg's Farm

We used to reach it, take our
bikes up Lynack Road, pause
at gravestones in the bramblebushed cemetery,
stones old and fallen,
wild flowers growing over
them in tangled clumps.

We sat cross-legged on the grass,
drinking our Cokes, preparing
for a journey whose distances
we could not even begin to measure.

Up Lynack Road into the back gate
of Blasberg's, we rode the crooked
rows, drowning in scented
apples, deep and scarlet
against a lilac-colored sky.

We careened down the road,
spring flying behind us like a cloak,
unaware that one day we would mourn the tangled underbrush,
the lost curve of apple trees,
the blue untarnished sky.



from What We Pass On: Collected Poems: 1980-2009 (Essential Poets Series)