few know the sweetness of twisted apples*

on boyhood’s farm
my grandmother spoke a language
i never understood—
a winnowing wind among the apple boughs
gnarled fruit of a quitted land
her skinnied limbs her skull-boned eyes
i cawed to crows
in windmilled heights and maple trees
my father dug potatoes
a cow would lick my arm
the coarseness of its tongue
old john the lugan
the basement his home
a crooked table where he ate from cans
the bed of straw upon a metal frame
sunlight’s meager portion—
a pillar of dust across a concave floor
polished dirt beneath his shoeless feet
the stubble of a furrowed face
his only language a toothless smile
singsong of a sweet-wined drunk
displaced by war
his family lost
perhaps relocated
maybe never was
his hands weaving twine
carving tines
whittling away the wooden days
until nothing was left
of my grandmother
or the cow
or the ashes of the apple trees
my father moved him on
only the smooth earth
to remember the soles of his feet


* The title is taken from a line in Sherwood Anderson's "Winsburg, Ohio"