Malacasoma

For several weeks in summer the crowns
and branches
of the apple trees wear silk

dense and withheld, like a word shouted underwater. 

On clear nights 
it’s like an ill-timed Halloween, the globes
of pale, huge fruit glowing above the
indigo grass with dozens or hundreds of
animated seeds. 

In the boring afternoons a boy likes to
swing into them with a stick, make the
curled bodies fall 

from the wound like rain
from a cloud if rain were
ink and solid 

—because after all there
are so many tents who will
miss just this few? 

He is a barbarian of the field,
teaching himself religion. Songbirds
converge 

and raise a violent din. 

M. E. MacFarland received the 2014 Southern Writers’ Symposium Emerging Writers award in poetry. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he attends the University of Virginia MFA program.