I picked an apple from a twisted tree
because its green-gold skin was dull and rough.
Half pear, half apple, from a history
when orchards grew less calculated stuff.

The skin seemed almost wooden when I bit,
but soda or champagne erupted, fresh
as fountains in a forest. I had hit
on Eve’s defiant, psychotropic mesh.

These apples lurk abandoned behind walls
too broken and moss-covered to invite
incurious ramblers. There an orchard sprawls
neglected, dark and sinful as the night.

Wild offspring of the rose and bramble bear
the chemistry of love and harsh despair.