You beat Patrick to it, Bill. -
He’s the one who jumps at inadvertent meanings and ambiguities.
What can I do to confine bruises to the fruit?
Maybe it was twelve months ago I did a pastiche of Marvell’s
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head
etc, It only came back to my mind out walking today after posting the below.
Max
On Aug 24, 2016, at 14:27, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Don't know if you intended it, Max, but it sounds, in stanza 2, as if the
> birds and kids might bruise darkly. Like best the first four lines of the
> final stanza, which have a real bounce.
>
> Bill
>
> On Thursday, 25 August 2016, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> August Ripening
>> [Capitol Hill, Seattle]
>>
>> Fruit underfoot! -
>> season profligate
>> all along the street.
>> Berries - nothing major.
>> Behind those houses, I bet
>> peaches and apricots
>> burgeon, ripen, succumb
>>
>> as birds and kids compete,
>> or fall bruising darkly.
>> By neglected back fences
>> vines once trained for
>> dreamed-of vintages
>> now spread undisciplined,
>> disrespected, neglected.
>>
>> The liquor store’s overstocked
>> with bargains from regions
>> known and unknown;
>> would-be connoisseurs
>> stand about tippling,
>> nodding, discerning
>> till tipsiness sets in.
>>
>> I’ll be off now along
>> those fruit-speckled streets
>> ducking low-hanging
>> branches, their ripe burdens
>> ever so profligate -
>> stepping gingerly where fruit
>> has wasted itself on concrete.
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