Heartbeat of an Appleseed, Abigail Knutson (December 2025)

Heartbeat of an Appleseed

Gifts there are that drop soft
only when grasping leaves
and they can descend
like soft, gray feathers
carried on a fitful current to my yard
where I sit and soak in sunshine’s weakening warmth
and let the fading beauty fill my heart—
a solar powered creature.
Aren’t we all?

Every breathing thing needs sun, water, and air.
As a child, did you hold your breath
through a tunnel’s maw?
I don’t see how it can be called a game.
That sweet inhale shared like a collective gasp
when a car bursts from darkness into light
feels as close to joy as the sun’s warm hand
cradling my face in the autumn chill.
Perhaps the point is to make oxygen
taste sweet.

Beneath the littered wrappers and paper cups,
the bones of the road still yearn
to be beautiful
and curve in slanted sunlight that turns gold
even the ugliness of a breathing world.
Some stars disappear once looked for,
but blaze in rest:
dazzling silence of the peripheral.
When you feel the gaze of our closest star,
just lift your face.
 
You began as an appleseed-sized promise
buried in the dark
of your mother, and look at you now.
When you feel a fleck of joy,
just let it melt into the warmth of your breathing
insides. You don’t need to know
which cloud dropped a flurry
of fragile, dendrite arms
to marvel at its crystal star
as it melts against your skin.
See what it will become
when the sun touches it again.