2007: Winter Poem

Grateful, I took an apple
from its paper, took it in both
hands, raised it to my lips,
inhaling its myth of open air
and closure—. Then a desire
to swallow space and time,
or to follow them, backward
and forward, endlessly up
and down the macadam, end
over end, back to seed or
on to cider— Not so fast
I pleaded. The heft of it;
the chill sweetness. Apples
in winter are a bitter gift.
I set it down again, entire.

—Daniel Hall

Hall is writer-in-residence at Amherst. His new book of poems, Under Sleep, will be published in April 2007.