Eying Them Apples
From his firm bed rock
Of unassailable logic
However earnest
He couldn’t quite grasp love
At home in more gossamer venues
Wafting
Teasingly just
Out of reach
Not able to pick up
Love’s plucky de-meaner
From afar
Only willing
To confer
Its first fruits freely
In an uncertain intimacy
Beyond accost
Of logic’s gripping tail
As if
Tolled
To shake down some dog
Only to get
It all backwards
As his skepticism had made him
Hard for so long
Until he could know longer
Get it
Up sow
Hi
Bye and bye
As the apple of his eye
Disembarks his safety zone
Leaving him in his
Free
Fall
Out of his tree
Her bounty
Mere droppings
Too his unyielding countenance
For baring
Whatever
Specter
To be
Sow full of crop
Aura leased
Scent-a-mentality
Beckoning his wallow
His Adam’s apple
Like an overzealous bobby
Robbing him
As swill be the case
Of reel nourishment
While fishing on dry land
Where pomes unsurprising
Are all rotting
And naught
For giving
Worming one’s heart
Arboring thoughts
So shady
When looking up
As some things are
Between you and the stars
Sheerly facing
Unremitting awning
And sow what
Gives
This is yet another poem addressing my common themes of the head versus the heart, logic sequestering itself from love. Unassailable logic, at the expense of love, seems to fit aptly with this poem’s prime metaphor, from the Bible: picking the apple from the tree of knowledge, setting off perpetual tension and confusion regarding different “fields” of knowledge. The many fruits from the garden of Eden may still be available, but we have become to smart or clever for our own good. A fixation on logic and its inevitable legalisms locks us out from accessing these higher fruits. We end up refusing to trade up the seeming certainty and safety of our water-tight legalistic systems for the supra-rational fruits of the spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23) Gracefully, legalisms bind themselves up an self-destruct, not being rooted in the life-giving forces of the spirit. Unfortunately, the crumbling of legalistic systems can still be very dangerous as they fall. This is often made worse by last-ditch efforts to keep patching such systems with ever-more sophisticated legalisms. Nonetheless, as they fall, and we can’t take it anymore, we may just hear the perennial call from the spirit world: Sow what gives…
