That apple you hold in your hand,
what is it? Envy? Jazz? Cosmic Crisp?
These new varietals are great,
I grant you, but maybe you’re old school,
found yourself an Arkansas Black.
Or maybe you discovered a Red Delicious
that’s actually delicious, the way they were
before you and I were born.
Or maybe you love how Red Delicious
taste of broken promises and
disappointment—remind you of
your childhood. We all take
our nostalgia where we can get it.

Anyway, the seeds in that apple you hold?
That apple you hold offers no suggestion
as to what sort of apples might appear
on the trees those seeds might grow,
each seed a different tree,
each tree different apples.
Perhaps terrible to eat.

It’s the age-old battle
between sex and grafting.
We know what we want
and we don’t trust evolution
to get us there.

Johnny Appleseed knew the trees
he’d planted were apt to bear
terrible-tasting apples. But what did he care?
They weren’t for eating anyway.
Never forget America
was a nation of drunks.
Fermented, perhaps, our differences
seem a little less pressing.

So that’s today’s metaphor,
from botany or history,
which is all agriculture
which is all civilization
which is all you and I are made of,
cell by cell, protein
by protein, every scrambled set
of chromosomes a bit more
like its parents than Envy’s seed.
Or Cosmic Crisp’s baby.
Or the progeny of Jazz.