II. What To Do with Seeds from the Apple Tree

A poem in response to a prompt about love in Dead Poets Live.

And promise to speak bravely always — for these are the seeds from which the kingdom of heaven comes, rushing and rising from earth’s plain dust. Don’t let surfaces fool you; everything is lit brightly from within. Small brown seeds sift red jewels from the soil and hang them in the sun, sparkling with magic (small beginnings are God’s best trick).

As a child I knew that an apple tree is a kingdom onto itself; so let us sow seeds for a kingdom in this good soil, and see whether God has up his sleeve a yield of one hundredfold or more.

This is the second of a cycle of seven poems that I wrote as a marriage proposal to my wife back in 1998; I gave her each poem as I wrote it. Each poem was accompanied by a small, symbolic gift — in this case, a handful of apple seeds. On one level, charming; on the other hand, after several weeks of this, she did get tired of telling her friends that she was now “five-sevenths engaged.”

The form of this poem was inspired by a lovely, lovely poem I found in the journal Image. Sadly, I cannot remember the name of the poem now, although I may still have the issue…I will have to hunt for it, and if I find it, I will post it here. Anyway, in the poem I was imitating, the beginning of each stanza was taken from the last line of the previous stanza, with the final line of the final stanza being the same as the first line of the first stanza — a full circle. I did the same with my cycle of seven poems, with the last line of each poem providing the first line of the next, and the last line of the last poem forming the first line of the first poem. It goes without saying, this poem is a pale imitation of the master, but it has sentimental value for my wife and me anyway.

This poem was written in response to a prompt by David S. in the very excellent literary magazine Dead Poets Live: