Birds and Apples

We are finally settled into our new place, and I just installed the router for wifi.  It is so much easier to take my computer around the house with me during the day.  We also added four additional members to our family. Oliver and Opal are love birds, and Gideon and Gwen are parakeets.  I have been wanting birds for a long time.  My grandmother and my great aunt had birds when I was young.  When I would spend the night with them, their birds would wake me up early in the morning.  At the time, I hated them! How dare they chirp and tweet all chipper like while I'm trying to sleep.  The sun was devastatingly wicked to an 8 year-old.  Now, I am awake before the sun comes up anyhow, and the birds make me smile because they remind me of memories with my grandmother.  They are a joy to watch as well.  The lovebirds are flirty and constantly "making out." I feel like I should throw a blanket over their cage and give them some privacy half of the time!  The parakeets are rather boring.  Gideon stands in front of the mirror checking himself out all day, and Gwen watches him from her side of the perch.  The constant admiration she shows him only reaffirms his love for himself.  Sometimes she tries to flirt with him, but Gideon flies away until she gives up.

A Minor Bird
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;


Have clapped my hands at him by the door
When it seemed as if I could bare no more.


The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.


And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.

"Apples always taste better with a pocket-knife." ~Uncle Cob

  I wish I would have kept track of all the things my grandparents and great aunts and uncles said growing up.  However, I do remember the most important ones like this!  My son just brought me an apple and my purse.  I have a pocket-knife in my purse which is perfect for apple eating.

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. 5
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass 10
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 15
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear. 20
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound 25
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, 30
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap 35
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his 40
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.