Concerto

A bellowing red apple hits full bloom like a high note
at the top of the crescendo of summer, legato curves
shining like C major, branches conducting, allegro con brio,

until the coda of autumn and a plummeting diminuendo —
the apple falls with the baroque high drama of a sudden
key change, and counts rests in the grass, rotting sotto voce

but accelerando: a solo passage for mould, that virtuoso,
in a cadenza that ruptures the fruit’s skin, a syncopated
improvisation transforming the flesh into a new composition.

 

Sarah Spence writes mostly poetry and sometimes stories, usually about illness, history and animals, and is an editor for literary journal From Glasgow To Saturn. Recent work appears in Hold My Purse, Knight Errant Press, Gilded Dirt, Sawney and Thistle Magazine.