Friday, August 3, 2012

Summer Apples


Backyard apple tree, Los Angeles 2012


Poem (at night Chinamen jump)

At night Chinamen jump   
on Asia with a thump

while in our willful way   
we, in secret, play

affectionate games and bruise   
our knees like China’s shoes.

The birds push apples through   
grass the moon turns blue,

these apples roll beneath   
our buttocks like a heath

full of Chinese thrushes   
flushed from China’s bushes.

As we love at night   
birds sing out of sight,

Chinese rhythms beat   
through us in our heat,

the apples and the birds   
move us like soft words,

we couple in the grace   
of that mysterious race.

-- Frank O'Hara

3 comments:

  1. Oh. Call me old-fashioned or ignorant but I love the poetry which rhymes and swings, dances and flings its imagines into song.

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  2. Interesting. Love the rhythm of the words. I didn't know apples would even grow in LA!

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  3. love the poem...
    and the apples. we have a very sad old apple tree on the hill behind our house. The hillside is so overgrown I haven't even looked to see if there are apples....

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