Naming My Apple Tree
By Adolph Caso
Its leaves shimmering in sunlight,
The burnt-red maple stands tall
Above the other trees in the yard,
And well above my
apple tree--
Also given to me
By an Italian immigrant
As gifts in my honor,
Our friendship having flourished spiritually,
For he died
Soon after planting the Maple,
And the Apple Tree yet to be named.
That tree is the
result
Of joining onto an existing branch
A shoot resulting in the new fruit-bearing tree—
The practice of men like him,
Who,
Unable to pronounce
Our word to graft
Preferred his more appropriate
Word innestare
To describe the method of joining,
Together--
One into the other--
Two cores
To come at one moment in time
To fulfill the matrix of every creation
In defiance of the Big Bang Theory.
Many would call my
apple tree a hybrid
Capable of being replicated
And transplanted,
And still be that exact tree
Flowering before my eyes
To have given me the fruit
That no other tree has given
In this whole wide world
And I
Am destined
Not to share its future with anyone
Or to duplicate it
As was his probable wish,
Knowing that in due time
This apple tree will die in-place,
Lost to time immemorial
Except
For this photo-metaphor already extant.
Why such a gift?
Why to me?
And why so terminal in time and space?
Should it disappear
Without the least trace of a name?
On splitting one red apple into two parts,
To quench my curiosity,
Its inner core revealed
A striking semblance
To The Star of David,
As though it were planned
To give pause to predestination
In naming the tree after that Star.
Before its death and mine,
In appreciation of his gift,
I’ve concluded to call my
tree
The Delicata Apple
In honor and memory of its creator,
Whose name was NED.
The Delicata Apple
Adolfo Caso, Friend,
Poet, Author, Photographer, Publisher
is a regular contributor to
Book Reader's Heaven...
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