summer transparency apple, sauced

continuity, through the apple

I love to feel a continuity

with those who preceded us:

there is a special apple, summer transparency,

grown in one orchard, I know of,

in these East Tennessee mountains,

my mother with a lot of slicing, trimming, simmering,

pressing through a Foley Food Mill,

and adding more sugar than seems right,

that apple she would render into the greatest of applesauces,

as did her mother before her in these same mountains,

and probably many more generations before her,

I feel my mother, my grandmother, and mothers on back,

working with us as the celestial high summer of June

is celebrated in the tart sweetness of this early apple sauced,

even more important to me in the maintaining of the continuity

is the belief in the child,

in the belief that life is a gift,

to be honored in the twinkle of the eye,

in the raising of the child,

all savored within the tart sweetness

of this June apple celebration.

by Henry H. Walker

June 28, ‘18