An Apple

You are thinking of
ones who made you look,
made you love them,
made you hate them,
made little impression
upon you,
were gone in an instant.
What was it they had on their faces,
their bodies? Something
in their cliched souls
that made you
stop and see them for
one red-hot instant and lend them,
in your mind,
uniqueness.

Now they’re gone and you try and try,
but you can’t get them back. A gleam
of hope, then they tumble away
from you and you are alone
again.

You know, you’re nothing special
yourself: ailments
common to your age
crop up after a life
of not seeing them and now
it’s just a matter of time
until you lose all of this —
people you knew and ones
you did not know;
your body and mind
and most of all
your own soul or whatever
you call it — an unwrapped
package of memory
and lessons,
all you’ve experienced.

Shrugging it all off now,
you get an apple from
a basket of apples. You bite
into it. It tastes OK:
not good, not
grand, not perfect;
it tastes OK. Soon enough
you’ll forget about it
and how it tasted and have
another one.

It does not matter
how it tastes now. Next time
it might be better. You
never know. You keep going
because there are stages
to knowing and you might
just get there and it might
be good again one day.
All of your friends
and acquaintances, ladies
and gentlemen, even
dogs and cats and other souls
might come back to you.

Eating your apple
down to its core —
striving to keep
your mind intact —
you still have hope
that you will;

that will have to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T