Sarah Conover TELEOLOGY OF THE APPLE With a nod to Christopher Howell The way I see it, we’re blameless. I can’t help my fleshy sweetness, nor the way I’ve grown swollen from a stiff, small kernel. It happens over and over, as if God can’t get it quite right, but always tries again to fill the trees with thousands of rubied sunrises small enough to palm. Like you, within me lie the seeds of another, and another, and whether I fall to the ground on my own or am plucked by some hand, I am not afraid. I remember the way the honeybees hovered around my own unmoving wings, when my whiteness was all lace— incandescent, irresistible. Then, on an early May evening, I flew, snowing petals in a warm wind, my one heart remaining fastened to the mute branch, secure, a small green eye open to the day. Copyright © 2004 by Sarah Conover. All rights reserved.