Apple Tree

Untamed, your modest April limbs can lead
to pies and heady ciders, dumplings shaped
to give the blush to Johnny Appleseed.
Your fame proceeds by way of bees who shed
your pollen yard by yard, a profligate
procession as the Fall from Eden tours
midsummer’s eve. When you play hard to get
the future’s caught up in your suckers, whorls,
and water sprouts—your fruit diverted by
ambition. That’s OK, we’ve all been led
astray chasing some sun, some destiny
prolonged that keeps us from the one given
today. Fresh underfoot. That keeps us strange
in our own skin. Wondering if we can change.

by Ed Granger

Editor’s Note: This sonnet’s ode to the apple tree elevates the simplicity of the tree and its fruit from pie to philosophy.

Led Zeppelin, LA Forum, 1977
(Van Halen Prelude)

The whole place coruscates with snuck-in
rum, sweat-soaked patchouli, pent-up
veneration for the air-brushed-on
bellbottoms and thousand-watt coifs tipping
last swigs of Moet backstage.
Then a spot Excaliburs the pot smoke,
finds an elvish figure for its nimbus—Page,
right hand raised as left wrings an arpeggio
from his Les Paul’s neck. Two brothers, specks
in a sellout crowd, take every gesture
in, then back to Pasadena. No money for effects
or Marshall stacks, but when Eddie adds one finger
of his right hand to the frets: a stairway sound.
“Alex, come here, man—check this out!”

by Ed Granger

Editor’s Note: Slant-rhyme sonnets feel deceptively free, while beneath the surface a great deal of discipline keeps the music steady, not unlike the riffs of great guitarists. RIP Eddie Van Halen.

Strong Pastoral

Field-reek of pig shit, hen shit, any shit
no less pungent for anonymity
as to phylum, genus, species, feces
laurel-strewn by horses adding to it
as they lug the steel disc picturesquely
across brown hills that dip and heave like guts
trodden by men who dampen in man sweat
that trickles into creeks that feed the sea.

Thus from shit and armpits are the seas fed.
And the multitudes who insist on more
and cheaper plus convenience and go forth
to multiply and buy their daily bread.
And the seas return what they’ve been given:
salt-sting and the dead-things stink of heaven.

by Ed Granger

Editor’s Note: Some sonnets do better with slant-rhyme and imperfect meter. The volta at the end of this poem is, however, quite on point.