Apple Tree

If you were an apple tree,

you'd speak to me about the sun

trapped in the warmth of your leaves,

how the evening star shines

in the flesh of your fruit,

I would bite, Abellio, 

into the waxy word of gods.

 

If I was an apple tree,

I'd say I was not planted 

for any man, I am thicket 

and tangle, I wear these birds,

am a shelter for a doe, 

the red mason bee, and so

do not bring me more straw men. 
 

If you were an apple tree, 

you'd assure me

that we were our own island;

sweet wood in an orchard

of freedom and in Winters

I would dress your empty boughs

with toast in a Wassail for Spring.

 

If I was an apple tree, I'd reply

that we were the meadow and 

rain too, in the flow of sap 

to each capillary and vein,

our spirits rooted in commune 

with soil, in the ecology of the wind.

 

If you were an apple tree,

you'd tell me the time

in five-petalled flowers, 

the round blush of your harvest,

gravity, the fall, and in this exchange,

I would hold the weight of your shadow.

 

If I was an apple tree, I'd confess

to my discordant heart, the cyanide

of my pips, yet sentimental, 

how the density of the space

between us was its own language,

where we are earthly and elemental.

 

A bit of nonsense really. And could do with a good edit, or pollarding...

Abellio is the name of a Celtic god associated with apple trees. It means apple in Celtic, I believe, and is also traced back perhaps to Apollo who (I think) was also connected to gifts of golden apples - but would have to look that up again. 
 

Painting is here:https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Blake_Eve_Tempted_by_the_Serpent.jpg

 

Also on Twitter: 

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Trees_in_a_Meadow_by_Edward_Mitchell_Bannister,_c._1890,_High_Museum_of_Art.jpg