Thanksgiving has come and gone, with lots of great family time. Now it's quiet here again, and I pulled out a poetry book to enjoy in front of the fire, From the Box Marked Some Are Missing (Hobblebush Books, 2010), by Charles Pratt. My family and I used to visit Charles and Joan Pratt's orchard, Apple Annie's, and it became a very special place for us. In the poem "November: Sparing the Old Apples," he describes the old trees in the orchard as "...broken-winged umbrellas/Black sea birds drying angular wings on a rock." The poem ends with him knowing what he should do but can't: "And I put my chainsaw away for another November/As if having endured conveyed some right to endure." There's something both exhausted and strong in that last line that appeals greatly to me.
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