Sarah Burke

Growing up, I was a real “indoor girl.” During the hot Ohio summers, my mother often had to plead with me to get out of the house and play. One afternoon when I was 7 or 8, she suggested I go outside and write a poem. That I could do. It's still one of the clearest memories of my childhood: the little notebook open on my lap, the uncut grass brushing my legs, the bees drifting between the flowers, and the branches of the tulip poplar whispering over my head. 

The tree had been planted the year I was born, but I'd never felt any special connection to it. That day though, it felt like we were breathing together. I'd recently learned in school that plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen – the opposite of human breathing. I remember thinking, We're the same age. I'm breathing in what the tree is breathing out. 

The resulting poem was just what you'd expect – the work of a little kid sitting under a big tree, trying her best to do it justice. I'm still that little kid when I try to write about the natural world. What's on the page never measures up to those moments of kinship, otherness, and surprise. But the writing has always been secondary. The practice of sitting still and paying attention has stayed with me my entire life. 

Unlike most of my botanical poems, “Ghost Apples” is based on a news story, not a lived encounter. I wrote it because I couldn't stop thinking about the strange transformation of the apples and the delicate evidence left behind.