Tonight Lillian from dVerse Poet’s Pub offers the prompt of that many-meaninged word ‘Fall’, in any version.

She asks that we use ‘Fall’ (or any of its verbal versions) in a quadrille, that is, a poem of exactly 44 words. This poetic form – popular within the dVerse community – is one of my favourites.

The title image for tonight’s quadrille happens to be a large specimen of apple variety ‘Jupiter’, grown and picked by Spouse, It’s sitting on the keyboard of the laptop procured for me by my software-engineer son, who has increased his fourteen inches at birth to seventy-four.

And – like Eve and Adam, and us his parents – has bitten into many apples, most notably on his first birthday, when he selected a bright red ‘Katje’ from the dwarf orchard tree under which he had been sat, and proceeded to eat it, pips and all.

a bitten apple


fallen with child

at Samhain, 

weary through Yule; 

tremors at Imbolc strengthening into 

the Quickening at Oestre; rib-racking hiccoughs

at Litha.  Earth moved as the doctor rotated him

out of breech; and soon after Lammas he emerged, 

translucent-fingered, all fourteen 

wondrous inches of him.



© Kathy Labrum McVittie     30 October 2023