All about apples – a poem in celebration of my wonderful Mum

A poem for Mum, who would have turned 80 on Wednesday 2nd October.

Kerensa Aval

Sometimes when I press apples

it is your hands I see

scooping chopped pips and flesh,

picking wasps from juice soaked cloth,

filling yellow buckets with pulp for the cows.

Just as I hear your voice at picking time,

hat in hand as I shake the tree,

“hatfuls, capfuls, three bushel bagfuls”

your knotted fist, clutching a Pendragon

or a King Byerd. “Look at this one.

You wouldn’t want that landing on your head.”

You, in your big green apron,

showing me your blisters

as I rip brown tape to make boxes,

hot bottles steaming in the pasteuriser –

Queenie, Hocking’s Green, Cornish Longstem.

You have no use for your hands now,

leaving me no choice but to use mine;

fingernails black from peeling walnut husks, 

thumbs blistered from twisting tops.

I cannot tell them apart.

Lizzy Lister 

Karensa Aval means Love Apple in Cornish, and was the name my parents gave their apple juice. The quote hatfuls, capfuls, three bushel bagfuls is from a Wassail song that begins with the lines: Old apple tree, we wassail thee, And hoping thou wilt bear, For the Lord doth know where we shall be, Till apples come another year.

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