Overload
(visit to a cider orchard, Herefordshire)
My mind turns
like a motorised sieve
shifting and sifting facts:
roots, root-stocks, feather-roots;
fruit names: Dabinett, Vilverri,
Chisel Jenny, Michelin;
cider and juice names:
Marcle Ridge, Putley Gold,
Once upon a Tree.
Family names:
the Hoggs, the Bulls,
the Taylor/Stainer generations.
I’m not a gyro-pallet,
programmed to shift each
yeasty gathering
at sustained intervals —
so I sit down, quiet by this tree,
listen to apples fattening.
Note: gyro-pallet – a circular pallet that regularly turns sparkling cider/champagne bottles to stop yeast clogging the liquid.
Gill McEvoy lives in Chester where she runs regular, and occasional, poetry events: 2 full collections with Cinnamon Press: ‘The Plucking Shed’, 2010, ‘Rise’, 2013. A second pamphlet is forthcoming from Happenstance Press (her first one; ‘Uncertain Days’ is out of print). Gill is a 2012 Hawthornden fellow.
