Apples

Now that they’ve set a standard for the apple

By choosing its forebearers and placing it on a diet

And mellowing its shoulders red, yellow, or green

According to chemi-fancy and current market fiat,

And brought it to a norm in taste and dapple,

It’s hard to find a fruit that’s individual.

I praise the factory tree, the thirty-peck supremacy

Over the ten-peck tree; I hail the standardization

Of fruit as round as doorknobs, as waxy as wax

(The eating’s the thing, not the explanation);

I acknowledge debt to the society of apples and facts,

To men and grafts that made the tree a hummer,

To pomological genius for developing a steady comer.

My old-time trees are doubtful from season to season,

Though usually they bear in vagrant wild-sweet unreason,

But my apples are the ones to eat for a taste of summer.