Leland Seese

An Apple Drops

I sit outside a bakery waiting
for my cappuccino, my chocolate croissant.
 
On my phone a video, an Afghan girl
speaks her epitaph into the camera,
 
We’ll die slowly…
 
An apple, hollowed out by drought,
tumbles from an apple tree beside me,
 
thuds against the sidewalk
like someone being bludgeoned.
 
I feel powerless and self-indulged.
What to do about the Afghan girl?
 
How are we to keep from cooking
our own atmosphere?
 
Another apple drops.
 
An aged woman hobbles up to me, cane,
babushka, dragging her entire world
 
behind her in a little shopping cart.
I get up from her seat and set before her
 
on her cafe table, her cappuccino
and her chocolate croissant
 

Leland Seese and his wife live in Seattle where they are foster-adoptive and bio parents of six. His poems appear in RHINO, Juked, The Chestnut Review, rust + moth, and many other journals. His debut chapbook, "Wherever This All Ends", was released in 2020 (Kelsay Books).