If you read one fruit poem this year, make it the truly meditative Moonlit Apples from John Drinkwater.
Silent moon, silent apples, silent meditation
Moonlit Apples from John Drinkwater.
Some pre-poem prompts
- What happens in you when you read this poem?
- Does it make you look at the sky a little more mindfully?
- Does it make you look twice at the apples in your fruit bowl to see if they too are ‘dappled in wonder’?
- Does it make you consider the beauty of silence and stillness?
- Or maybe something else? Poems touch each of us differently and every perspective is valid and lovely.
I love the way he compares the colour of the deep sea to ‘moon washed apples of wonder.’ The moonlight really does give things that underwater quality doesn’t it?
Moonlit Apples, by John Drinkwater (1917)
At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes
A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.
A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then
There is no sound at the top of the house of men
Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.
They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;
On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams
Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,
And quiet is the steep stair under.
In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.
And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep
Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep
On moon-washed apples of wonder.
How can we make this poem relevant to our meditation practice?
There’s so much to pay attention to in our every day lives, and there’s a lot going on inside too. For example our thoughts, feelings, emotions and bodily sensations all call out to us and ask for attention. Yet there is something in us, in you and I, which sees the changing picture show of life. Something in that witnesses our emotions and sees them change, something that sees thoughts and watches them come and go.
Somewhere inside there’s a great, calm silence. And in our meditation can we go to that silent place and become familiar with it. Now of course we don’t find the silence straight away because the mind and the world can be very noisy can’t they. It might not be easy to spot at first but it is always there.
If we sit through that first few minutes of meditative restlessness, where the mind says ‘I don’t want to do this’ or ‘this is boring’ we can eventually come to land in a very quiet place. And by taking time for meditation, time to close our eyes, we can learn to enjoy that stillness. And here’s why…
The moon is always there, even when we don’t see it
The silence of our inner reality is something we carry with us all the time. It might be more apparent in meditation or at the end of a yoga class, or when we see a beautiful sunrise and read a gorgeous poem, but it can be found within you in the midst of every day life too.
Our meditation time is often the place we first encounter this kind of stillness because as we sit down to meditate we create the right conditions for finding it. That’s to say- we make it circumstantially convenient for stillness to make an appearance. When it does we recognise it, and with practice over time and as though by magic we can go out into our busy day to day life only to find the silence has come along with us.
When our life experiences are very captivating – for better or worse – that the silence can get covered over. We don’t see it or don’t feel it, but thankfully it’s always there, just as the sky is always present behind the rain clouds.
All this talk of clouds brings us nicely back to another beautiful line in the poem:
‘and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
Dapples the apples with deep-sea light
If you like this topic you might also enjoy this video which explores creativity and silence.
And for a tasty treat, why not try this baked apple recipe. Delicious and simple to make.
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