dad on high
dropping from his trees
apples for lunch
I walk to the chicken coop
to visit my friends the hens
southern sunset
filling the apple bin
a deeper red
thinking of a time gone by
when the sky was beautiful
applesauce
the cinnamon glow
of a kerosene lamp
we didn't need to have one
my mother liked how it looked
windfall apples
palaces for worms
American pie
I started getting to know
worms eating into my brain
straight falling rain
tiny lakes upon the tree
stem hollows of apples
I have always loved the rain
but it's the snowy season
baskets in a row
overflowing with apples
on one a sweater
was it my mother's or mine?
Dad goes on picking apples
~Jane & Cie~
Notes:
The Hokku stanzas of these Tan Renga were created by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The Ageku were created by me.
When I was writing my Ageku, I was remembering my childhood in New Mexico between the ages of four and ten.
It wasn't idyllic by any means. We were very poor. But we did have a half-acre of land, and we had chickens and fruit trees and we grew corn and beans.
We also ate a lot of stuff like boiled soybeans and buckwheat groats. I still like buckwheat groats. You could put a bit of butter and honey on them and they tasted good. However, to this day, I loathe boiled soybeans. I would eat my shoe before I would ever eat another boiled soybean.
I knew I was weird and different from a very young age. These days doctors would probably put me on Ritalin and antidepressants. One did try to put me on phenobarbitol when I was a year and a half old because I didn't sleep for crap. My mother said it had the opposite effect and I was awake for three days straight.
It probably put me into a manic state. It may even have been what triggered the onset of my bipolar disorder. Any doctor who would instruct a parent to give phenobarbitol to a child needs a damn good whacking, and nothing will change my mind about that.
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