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Bread and Circuses

Chapter 10: THE APPLE-MAN FROM AWBRIDGE
By Helen Parry Eden
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Poetry

About This Book

A lyrical collection of short poems ranges from quiet country scenes and childhood memories to urban sketches and religious reflections. The poet renders streams, gardens, market sellers, and domestic interiors in close sensory detail while pairing everyday observation with moral and spiritual meditation. Animal vignettes and playful pieces for children sit alongside elegies, prayers, and ironic portraits of modern life, producing tones of humour, tenderness, and solemnity. Varied forms and concise portraits move between pastoral lanes, London streets, and intimate household moments while attending to time, sorrow, and faith.

THE APPLE-MAN FROM
AWBRIDGE

While I stand upon the pavement and I dress the dusty stall, Where they sell the travelled apples, I bethink me most of all How the Quarentines are ripening in Michelmarsh again And the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-clinking up the lane.
Sweet and slim the Ladies’ Fingers fall around you as you pass, And the Hollycores are mellow by the pig-hole in the grass, ’Tis but green they look, you pluck them, and you list the ratt’ling core— And the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-chaffering at the door.
Then the first baked batch of Profits, ’twas a treat my mother planned, Drew them foaming from the oven with the dishcloth round her hand, She who poured the amber cider to the pewter’s polished brink And the Apple-man from Awbridge wet the bargain with a drink.
For he buys them by the bushel and he buys them on the trees And he sends them from the orchard plot to places such as these; And there’s money in your pocket and a hollow at your heart When the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-loading of his cart.
And maybe the nameless apples on the stall in Fulham Road Once were piled behind his pony in that fresh and fragrant load And maybe it was my mother pulled the Ladies’ Fingers down; And the Apple-man from Awbridge turned them over to the town.