Puzzle No. 2

THE WORD ON THE TREE

You pick the word ‘apple’
without really grasping it
(though you may think you feel
a sense of its gravity),
lower it into your mouth
like the full length of a flaming sword
and bite into an empty sign

with no original signified
you don’t have a damned reason to fall
for someone else’s idea of guilt
(why take their word for it?)
instead, you blink and whisper slowly
recreating all things in your own imagination

to freely play in a garden
of uncut hedges and broken sundials
circles without circumference or center
geometry of sand
continuum without ends
shades of nameless colors
and the freedom to forbid
the establishment of any rules whatsoever

then the taste of white apple flesh and a scarlet peel
evaporates like carnival candy with only a sticky residue

you reform the word in your mouth to reattach it to its limb
and when you make the ‘L’ sound
the backs of your teeth are smooth as seeds