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Remember: a poem a day keeps the doldrums away!

Crab Apple Trees
by
Larry Schug

I’m tempted to say these trees belong to me,
take credit for blossoms that gather sunrise
like stained glass windows,
because eighteen springs ago
I dug holes for a couple of scrawny seedlings,
spread their roots in a bed of manure,
watered them, supported them with stakes and twine
until the saplings could stand alone in the wind.
But now, the flowering crabs in my yard,
like grown children, have business of their own,
bumblebees to feed,
and small sour balloons to inflate
by the time autumnal flocks
of robins and cedar waxwings
come to them for sustenance.
My reward is in the way my eyes
gorge on brilliant blossoms,
the sweet aroma my nose inhales
like a rich dessert
in a restaurant for the senses.

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Larry Schug, after a work life of various kinds of manual labor and learning, is retired—a career he says he was born for. Author of six collections of poetry, he lives with his wife, dog, and three cats near a large tamarack bog in St. Wendel Township, Minnesota.

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