Poem for the Day: Toffee Apples (from my 2013 collection) of Arc & Shadow -

 

Toffee Apples

In years gone by women
made toffee apples before they died.

They passed the recipe down

through the fruit trees that swayed

and rolled apples on the land.

We collect the apples now from memory,

the heavy branches staring a gloss

of Delicious Reds, crisp, evergreen

Granny Smiths. We leave them in

their skins, the toffee boils in the pot;

a liquid of glucose, castor sugar, cochineal.

Toffee apples form a perfect sphere

like miniature worlds in sticky charm.

Popsticks placed within the core

are like peace flagpoles, one a piece.

Cool and clamped in their tight red bellies

the apples cry out ‘eat me, eat me.’

Sirrrip! The toffee lifts as lip, as ledge

for the mouth’s first bite.

Red balls like the sun, a stitched ball

in your hand, the earth’s red blood.

Crimson candy you have to work your way

into, mouth dribbling a spillway of saliva.

Toffee that can only be eaten

in that first deep crunch,
a crack between teeth
like the breaking of ice.