He liked a good English apple, did my father.
When he died, we planted James Grieve, Blenheim Orange.
We eat, give to friends, make wine. Some I pick early,
wrap in pages of the Echo, pack in boxes.
In the cellar they will last through winter,
preserved, I am told, by newsprint and the damp.
Until Christmas they remain firm, sharp.
Thereafter, the slightest bruise spreads like bad news.
By July, they will have shrivelled to scrotums,
spilling bright fungi of startling delicacy,
yellow, pink, green. I commit them to compost,
tend this year's crop, sample the new wine, miss him.