SUBJECT>Re: Widowed POSTER>Laurel EMAIL> DATE>1108417967 IP_ADDRESS>156.77.108.71 PASSWORD>aaFRbor6/KzWk PREVIOUS>83393 NEXT> 83415 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

Ash,
I didn't want to mess with this much, so here's my slight edit:

Widowed

I didn't think of you today.
I carried a basket of apples
to the kitchen, peeled their skin
in single strands the length of my arm.

When the water boiled, and I dropped
the apples in, watched them detach
themselves from their cores.
The water turned as white as winter.

All across the orchard, apples lay
like the roundness of beetles.
Each night the fox comes for me.

He waits at the gate-folded road.
He knows the light sauce I'll pour
over my apples. He knows how
he'll eat my apple heart.

Mostly, I wanted that first line to have the line all to itself. It's such a fine, solid line. As a reader, I found it muddied by "I carried."

I removed the line about dying from the poem. I think the poem already implies that line and it need not be said.

This is a really fine poem, Ash. The fox reminds me very much of Lucille Clifton's fox poems---have you read them? I'm not a huge fan of her work, but oh, her fox poems are swell!

This is so close to done. If you revise at all, proceed carefully. (smile)

Mind if IBPC this? It's quite good.

Laurel