Apples, Angels

I realized today

it was fourteen years

since I last saw you

and yet you are

as real to me now

and nearly as close

your embracing presence

I walked

to the graveyard

though not the one where

you are buried in upstate New York--

I thought you'd enjoy

the weeping angel

behind the church

her girlish shoulders

bent over the headstone

of someone named Hooper

her wings adroop.

Then we went

to the little grocery downtown

where we discussed

whether to wash the pesticides

from the glowing Washington apples

or buy the pathetic organic ones

from Chile.  You worried

about such things.

You still do.

Photograph used by permission of John Hooper Dean (jack@ourweepingangel.org). Apples, Angels is included in Kimberly Davis' new chapbook, Alchemies of Loss.