What Happened to the Apples?

by Rick Mullin

For Lydia

What happened to the apples, grapes, and pears
that rolled beneath a carpeting of bees
in summers I remember still? The trees
are dusky skeletons of sticks and hairs
beneath their hairshirts of wisteria.
Sweet color lasts a week. The cardinal flies
to other airways once the purple dies,
and lying green provokes hysteria
in one who knows the trunkwork is a sham.

There is a groundhog known as “Mr. Clam”—
the sobriquet awarded by my daughter.
It thrives as a perennial somehow,
and this year’s Clam is a fatter, fatter now,
that sac of dirt and vegetables and water.