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SNOW WHITE
Ellin Anderson
Who spread the pages for all that I wrote?
Love shook the apple that stuck in my throat,
Spilling the cup that was swallowing me:
I ate the apple, but Love shook it free.
Sky-high horse where the clouds intersect
Fair Princess Travesty, dead of neglect,
Thrown like a shadow on the One World Tree:
I ate the apple, but Love shook it free.
And when she held me upside down,
I became Princess of a wider town,
Both feet firm on its tapestry:
I ate the apple, but Love shook it free.
Last seen pushing a cart through the rain
With her belongings, down Marjorie Lane;
Shy for an angel of high degree:
I ate the apple, but Love shook it free.
THE APPLE-EVES
Ellin Anderson
The Apple-Eves, the Apple-Eves,
As lovely as the summer leaves
In gardens sacred to the Should,
Learned how to blunder into good.
The gardens of the Should were fair
To those with red or flaxen hair;
The summer days alone were kind
To those of independent mind.
When morning fell on orchards green
These daughters of the North were seen
Careening into good, along
The tidal river's misty prong.
They rode their silver tenspeeds round
The wooded roads, until they found
That velvet lawns alone will hiss
In groves of paradise like this.
They sampled sweet variety:
The Empire, Rome, and Liberty,
The Spartan and the Northern Spy,
A feast to kindle passions by,
While skirting traps along the way:
The subtle nets of macramé
Whose creamy lace and ruby beads
Made patterns like a face that bleeds.
And now, to lend my vivid voice
And expertise, regarding choice:
The traps through which we did not fall
Were never really traps at all.
We stopped by quiet streams to add,
Thus to be addled, or go mad,
And while my fair companion shone,
I failed at simple sums, alone.
There lay across the stream a door
Where recollection's waters pour,
And then a bridge that swung us wide
To patterns on the other side.
Cerulean her eyes, a chalk,
Bore witness and drew forth a shock
That marks the Mother of the Corn
Who never was mislaid, forlorn,
In tournaments of sums to be,
Choosing her daughters, leaving me
With parts that supersede the whole
As satisfaction for the soul.
How did we get from here to there,
When Shoulds were lurking everywhere?
And if she wheels beneath the sky
A work in progress, what am I?
Tall, brave, and cheerful, four men run
As blond as daisies in the sun,
And leave the orchard, as they should,
In cords of fragrant apple-wood.
My lacy dress without a seam
Remains another's blossom dream,
But I will swear, till void of breath,
My apple blooms as sweet as death.
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