An excerpt from
Selected Poems
by Ralph Gustafson
My Love Eats an Apple
She bites into the red skin
Of the white hard apple in bed
And there is joy in heaven
Like innocence and whitefalls
Of snow and waters dancing up
In among green trees perched with more
Apples in tight skin
hard as a bite and containing
Seven-eighths applesap deadpan.
I try to distill this knowledgeable joy
In crunching heaven.
God sits up there amongst
His shamefully nude nudgers,
Praising sin,
The juice of the plucked
Happy apple
In great psalms and paeans
Dripping down His testamentary beard.