Today a poety book arrived in the post. It was most welcome to come home to, I was tired and rainswept, then having to spar with arrogant builders who had yet again parked across our driveway. This is the first poem in Wendell Berry’s collection The Peace of Wild Things. I thought it was special. It helped with my anger issues.
The Apple Tree
In the essential prose
of things, the apple tree
stands up, emphatic
among the accidents
of the afternoon, solvent,
not to be denied.
The grass has been cut
down, carefully
to leave the orange
poppies still in bloom;
the tree stands up
in the odor of the grass
drying. The forked
trunk and branches are
also a kind of necessary
prose—shingled with leaves,
pigment and song
imposed on the blunt
ligaments of fact, a foliage
of small birds among them.
The tree lifts itself up
in the garden, the
clutter of its green
leaves halving the light,
stating the unalterable
congruity and form
of its casual growth;
the crimson finches appear
and disappear, singing
among the design.
Off The Edge Gardening 
Lovely, the thought of apple trees lifting themselves up in the garden, a foliage of small birds amongst them. Thank you for the introduction to Wendell Berry’s poetry.
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My pleasure, I do love a good poem or two!
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Thank you so much for this lovely poem. I am not familiar with the poet—yet. But I will certainly begin looking for him.
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New to me too, a farmer from Kentucky, lovely words.
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What a beautiful poem. Not a poet I know.
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Glad you enjoyed it too, he arrived just in time to save me. 🙂
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Are your gold high heeled boots too meticulously maintained to apply to someone’s lower backside for blocking the driveway?
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I should get some special black studded ones for the occasion!
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I probably should not have asked.
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Delightful! “The grass has been cut down, carefully to leave the orange poppies still in bloom”.
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Very special, I will go and look at my apple tree today, I don,t think that I have been appreciating it as I should.
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Hope you have reconnected! 😉
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