Choice

 

Penn Kemp

 

“Golden apples of the sun”
wrote Yeats and he
might have described these.

Okanagan apples, tinged red,
descend from one Golden
Delicious, sparking
sensation among taste, touch
and aroma.
                          Crisp
on the tongue between
sweet and ever so
slightly sour.

Hinting mystery.

*

Old tales tell of tainted apples, tempting.
Not just to eat the fruit proffered by
Serpent or Lilith for the tree
of knowledge.

*

But tantalizing too. “Who is fairest
of them all?”

Maleficent clings to beauty’s power
and poisons that
upstart Snow White, offering
her the apple
no-one could
resist.

*

Eris, goddess of Discord, cunningly
labels her golden apple “For
the Most Beautiful”.

And sits back
laughing to await
the display.

*

Three goddesses swarm to
claim their prize from Paris, Prince
of Troy.

               Hera, Athena
and Aphrodite, goddess of Beauty—

she who promised Paris the
loveliest woman in the world—
how could he not
award her the trophy?

Miffed, the rejected ones revenge
themselves on Troy, ongoing
for a decade and more.

*

The apple still belongs
to Lilith, to Venus/Aphrodite.

Open one
sideways and her emblem
is revealed, splayed
in a star circle of five seeds.

*

“As seen from above, the orbit
of Venus forms a near-perfect
pentagram, with the five lobes”

Tell me how the ancients gathered
such correspondence. Tell me how
the apple tree knows.

How seeds drop to the earth and some
grow.

 

 

Poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp has been celebrated as a trailblazer since her first publication of poetry by Coach House (1972). She was London's inaugural Poet Laureate (2010-13) and Western University’s Writer-in-Residence (2009-10). Chosen as the League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word Artist (2015), Kemp has long been a keen participant/activist in Canada’s cultural life. Recent tiles include P.S. (with Sharon Thesen, Fall 2020); Fox Haunts; Local Heroes; River Revery and Barbaric Cultural Practice.