Apple-Cart Girl
© Surazeus
2026 11 11

Eyes sparkling with dawn sun on gold-leaved hills,
apple-cart girl reaches small slender hand
among yellow leaves where sly serpents hiss
and plucks ripe apples from branches of hope,
filling willow baskets with scarlet fruit
that glisten bright as blood on full-moon nights.

Heart aching with sorrow of bitter loss
when her mother was killed ten years before
resisting rich man of the market town
who tried to make her his twenty-third wife,
apple-cart girl pauses along signless road
and gazes through tears at the river meadow.

Broad meadow of low undulating hillocks
slopes down toward blue Bodincus River shore
where thousands of winter daffodils bloom
with star-shaped petals yellow as the sun
interspersed with magenta cyclamen,
swarming with hummingbirds and butterflies.

Ghost of her mother haunts her lonely steps
as apple-cart girl arrives at the market
where she rents stall beside the copper smith,
then softly hums sweet playful melodies
while people buy apples from Tree of Knowledge
with bronze coins stamped with face of Saturnus.

Gazing at bearded face of Saturnus,
stamped on silver denarius that gleams bright,
apple-cart girl thinks about her absent father
who left one winter night when she was nine,
then flips the coin to observe on the back
her father crowned by Goddess Victory.

After selling every apple of her heart,
apple-cart girl pulls her rickety cart
through thinning crowd in purple twilight glow,
but stumbles when front wheel of her cart breaks,
so she slumps in dry grass of misery
and cries in shimmer of the rising moon.

Young man bearing lyre stops before the girl
and asks, "Junia Pomona, my dear friend,
why are you weeping over a broken wheel?"
Smiling as he gives her libum to eat,
Phoebus repairs broken wheel of her cart,
then walks beside her on the moonlit road.

Pausing by meadow of gold daffodils,
Pomona and Phoebus gaze at the river,
then build four-pillared fane from fallen logs,
and sit by glowing fire in ring of stones
till he confesses his love, and they kiss
while ghost of her mother beams with delight.

surazeus.blogspot.com/2026/11/…

Orpheus performs epithalamium at Temple of Juno to celebrate wedding of his friend Phoebus with his bride Junia Pomona, the gentle apple-cart girl.

#Poetry #Poem #Pastoral #Necropastoral #MetaModernism #Transrealism #NewSublimity #NewRomanticism #AmericanDream #Cinemism #Existentialism #Surrealism #NegativeCapability #NewGnosticism #MetaRealism #NewTranscendentalism #Astarism