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Martin Bennett

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An Apple

‘Les fruits sont plus fidèles’ Cezanne

Provenance a mystery, down the carriage aisle
rolls this apple, rolls and veers and rolls up
to the sliding doors, wobbles before it settles,
a pale green, somewhat improbable fullstop –

overworld and underworld come together
with a doff of the hat at Magritte.
Today being Saturday and no commuter on the seat
opposite, distant schoolboy memories of ‘Finders, keepers;

losers, weepers’: Something for nothing, early morning windfall!
Besides, who ever declined a free breakfast, above all
during these lean times when each month’s end stalks
like an accountant with potentially ruinous powers –

Prompting the 64 cent question, to pocket or not to pocket it?
Peckishness knows only one answer, the quicker the better,
without risk of getting caught. Except, fruit once snatched,
I find myself assailed by misgivings as old as Adam,

as though this small sub-suburban instance contained
a re-enactment of the Fall: Guilt or mental itch? Then,
glimpsed a few seats down, the bag whence the apple came;
smile of the owner while I walk over, hand it back –

Mind’s eye switching to those depicted by Paul Cezanne,
‘so radiantly serious, so true’; Cox, Pippin or Granny Smith,
the one which dropped on Newton’s head, logo of Gravity –
What, here on earth and beyond, keeps everything in place.

Page(s) 8

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