Day 156 | Transplanting (excerpt) by Lee Ann Roripaugh

Transplanting (excerpt)
Lee Ann Roripaugh

5. Japanese Apple

She was given an apple on the plane,

round and fragrant with the scent

of her grandfather’s fruit orchards

during autumn, when chestnuts

dropped from their trees and struck

the metal rooftop like the small heavy

tongues of bells, and black dragon-

flies like quick shiny needles darted

in and out of the spin and turn

of leaves fluttering down like soft

bright scraps of silk. She wrapped

the apple in a napkin to save

for later, and it was confiscated

at customs before she had the chance

for even a taste. Over the years it

seemed to grow larger, yellower, juicier

and more delicious, and even though

there were burnished rows of apples

stacked in gleaming pyramids

at the supermarket with quaint

names like Macintosh, Winesap,

and Granny Smith, and even though

there were sunlit apple orchards

at my American grandfather’s ranch,

where rattlesnakes slumbered

in the heat and redolence of fruit

flesh, frightening the horses,

she sampled one after another,

but they never tasted as sweet

or as bright as the apple taken from her,

the one she had to leave behind.