Scott Turner Schoeld

Unnished Sestina 9/17/01 On Rosh Hashanah we ate apples. Apples and honey for a sweet new year. For the sake of communion I drove to his house through the crisp dusty night, end of a Southern September somebody said reminded them of New York in the fall. Six days prior, I was there to watch the buildings fall and by there I mean held tight to the point of shattering in my own house my sts like winter apples at my sides. The date that morning had been sometime September now well never forget the day, when sunlight stewed like honey, watered down, through the stillest air of the year. Today began the new year. The seventeenth of September does not sound true, so far from where we have come. We left one slice of apple for the things we will carry over on the white plate, smeared with honey, that you carried over with you from Israel when you ed last fall. Now you wake, shattering at the slightest sounds, and ache for your mothers house. I was in my house when the buildings began to fall and knew we would smell the smoke for years a war to char the springtime scent of apples that rises with the heat, slow like falling honey, part of the cycle of joy and work that slows into September. I always found this time a closing: the end days of September, where dry leaves fall outstretched onto low roofs of houses THEYRE JUMPING THEYRE LIKE RAINDROPS, SPLASHING WHEN THEY

FALL came the call from 1st Ave. We called this season a natural end to the year but this day I asked you: Where will this year lead us, honey? You couldnt speak for the speeches on TV, just handed me an apple.

Scott Turner Schoeld 2001