Mother of Science Eats an Apple

by Shelley Benaroya

 

Knowing takes time.  And so, you watch the fruit
fatten like the late sun on a new day,
crippling the tree with answers.  Again, say:
I am, afterall, the god’s dessert.  Why bite
this sweet meat of illumination? 
Juice
finds the clear veins of your skin.  This lesser
light’s crisp flesh tunnels through your fierce, lunar
appetite till all that’s left is the choice
made: that core star and those small hardening seeds
of your eyes. What you draw from the moment’s
electric peatthe hiss and bickering family
someday makes a science of, the sown need
to leave heaven’s plot looking intelligent
and certain enough to find your way back again—can’t be.

 

 

 


Shelley Benaroya is founding director and teaching artist for the Writing Center for Creative Aging (www.writingcenterforcreativeaging.com). Her poetry has appeared in all the sins, Diner, Ekphrasis, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken, Mobius, Thirteenth Moon, and elsewhere. In 2017, she received the Ekphrasis Prize and a Pushcart Prize nomination.