Jim Limber on the Apple Harvest
Never was good with women I mean I
Had a few woman friends at the factory
But that was work and sometimes I think they
Were nice to me because they had to be
Nice to the men even the men beneath them
And me I died just like I started down
But nobody has to be nice in Heaven
Nobody has to smile God is a wom-
an for some folks in Heaven and
God is a man for others and for some
Folks God is both and neither one for some folks God
Is neither one and nothing in-between
I see folks’ Gods whenever I see their faces
But God don’t look like anybody here
For me God is a woman and Her face is
Black as a bright black stone I’ve walked with Her
On the flat stone path between the apple orchard
And the garden where first the harvest flowers
* * *
Shane McCrae’s most recent books are The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), and In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which won the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry, was a finalist for the National Book Award, The Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award, and has been nominated for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
