Read Online The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass - Free Book Online Page A

is thick, shaggier, and the name
    is absurd. It speaks of durable
    unimaginative pleasures: reading Balzac,
    fixing the window sash, rising
    to a clean kitchen, the fact
    that the car starts & driving to work
    through hills where the roadside thickens
    with the green ungainly stalks,
    the bracts and bright white flowerets
    of horse-parsnips.
    Â 
    Â 
    C HILD N AMING F LOWERS
    When old crones wandered in the woods,
    I was the hero on the hill
    in clear sunlight.
    Death’s hounds feared me.
    Smell of wild fennel,
    high loft of sweet fruit high in the branches
    of the flowering plum.
    Then I am cast down
    into the terror of childhood,
    into the mirror and the greasy knives,
    the dark
    woodpile under the fig trees
    in the dark.
    It is only
    the malice of voices, the old horror
    that is nothing, parents
    quarreling, somebody
    drunk.
    I don’t know how we survive it.
    on this sunny morning
    in my life as an adult, I am looking
    at one clear pure peach
    in a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe.
    It is all the fullness that there is
    in light. A towhee scratches in the leaves
    outside my open door.
    He always does.
    A moment ago I felt so sick
    and so cold
    I could hardly move.
    Â 
    Â 
    P ICKING B LACKBERRIES WITH A F RIEND W HO H AS B EEN R EADING J ACQUES L ACAN
    August is dust here. Drought
    stuns the road,
    but juice gathers in the berries.
    We pick them in the hot
    slow-motion of midmorning.
    Charlie is exclaiming:
    for him it is twenty years ago
    and raspberries and Vermont.
    We have stopped talking
    about L’Histoire de la vérité ,
    about the subject and object
    and the mediation of desire.
    our ears are stoppered
    in the bee-hum. And Charlie,
    laughing wonderfully,
    beard stained purple
    by the word juice ,
    goes to get a bigger pot.
    Â 
    Â 
    T HE B EGINNING OF S EPTEMBER
    I.
    The child is looking in the mirror.
    His head falls to one side, his shoulders slump.
    He is practicing sadness.
    II.
    He didn’t think she ought to
    and she thought she should.
    III.
    In the summer
    peaches the color of sunrise
    In the fall
    plums the color of dusk
    IV.
    Each thing moves its own way
    in the wind. Bamboo flickers,
    the plum tree waves, and the loquat
    is shaken.
    V.
    The dangers are everywhere. Auxiliary verbs, fishbones, a fine carelessness. No one really likes the odor of geraniums, not the woman who dreams of sunlight and is always late for work nor the man who would be happy in altered circumstances. Words are abstract, but words are abstract is a dance, car crash, heart’s delight. It’s the design dumb hunger has upon the world. Nothing is severed on hot mornings when the deer nibble flower heads in a simmer of bay leaves. Somewhere in the summer dusk is the sound of children setting the table. That is mastery: spoon, knife, folded napkin, fork; glasses all around. The place for the plate is wholly imagined. Mother sits here and Father sits there and this is your place and this is mine. A good story compels you like sexual hunger but the pace is more leisurely. And there are always melons.
    VI.
    little mother
    little dragonfly quickness of summer mornings
    this is a prayer
    this is the body dressed in its own warmth
    at the change of seasons
    VII.
    There are not always melons
    There are always stories
    VIII.
    Chester found a dozen copies of his first novel in a used bookstore and took them to the counter. The owner said, “You can’t have them all,” so Chester kept five. The owner said, “That’ll be a hundred and twelve dollars.” Chester said, “What?” and the guy said, “They’re first editions, Mac, twenty bucks apiece.” And so Chester said, “Why are you charging me a hundred and twelve dollars?” The guy said, “Three of them are autographed.” Chester said, “Look, I wrote this book.” The guy said, “All right, a hundred. I won’t charge you for the autographs.”
    IX.
    The insides of peaches
    are the