Apple Cider

“Cider,” he said, “Isn’t that just apple juice?”

“Oh, no,” I say, “Cider is wild turkeys brazenly crossing the road on the way to Percival, Iowa.
It is white sheets hanging on the line, wild plums, and falling leaves at Waubonsie Park.

Cider is old barns and old men who still wear bib overalls and talk about shucking corn and threshing crews. It is
a team of horses named Babe and Whiskey pulling memories behind a plow.

Cider is cousin to pickles steeping in crocks, fresh-squeezed lemonade, peach jam and potatoes stowed in in the same fruit cellar you hid in when the tornado took your farm.

Drinking cider is a ritual where you contemplate the meaning of gravity, the purpose of sweat bees, and the scariness of reflections that peer back from the depths of cisterns and wells.

It is murkiness and clarity as one.
It is yearning and reward. “

I give him a drink from a chipped jelly glass and wait for his response.
“Now,”he says, “I understand.”

“Apple juice,” I say, “however, is just apple juice.”

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Tags:

poem, apple, cider, midwest and jing