Late Afternoon In An Ontario Orchard by Maria Claire Leng

To an apple in an orchard blue,

The sky’s a copper green,

Cloistered crimson honeycombs,

You’re recherché in elk-en tree.

Branches skyward paren by you.

The hills far off (a woman’s breast),

Red oaks of line, they draw for you—

Gloaming choir of wilderness.

Compare the gentle bred of you

To season’s end and unrelent?

Unmoved by God’s requirement—

You calm the wind to a stall—

Your rathe & ruby jewel — then finally crowns

The bended bough’s embrace, you fall—

And we fall too, to have lost such loveliness as

You, an apple in an orchard blue.

Artist’s Statement

As a poet, I’ve embarked on writing a sonnet for each of my late aunt Marie Manson’s paintings. Her painting here is a pastel. Pastels are very difficult because one mistake ruins the whole. The word You is spoken eight times in the poem making it common and anthropomorphized, until the final couplet where the You is a person who’s passed away. The poem has an extra couplet because I could not end on, “—you fall” but rather the memory of you. It is a celebration of love in the absence of love, and dedicated to the memory of my aunt.

Maria Claire Leng received her MFA on a Jane Kenyon scholarship from Bennington College. She is published in Canada and the United States with her most cherished poem, “Cancer,” under Editor’s Picks at the online WebDelSol. She resides in Ontario.

Marie Roberta Manson (1933-1981) was a Canadian artist who studied under noted Group of Seven artists Arthur Lismer and went on to a full career as artist and teacher which took her across Canada and to the Arctic Circle where she learned and taught Inuit art. She died at age 47 of lung cancer.