Apple

After watching a fruit, long ago,

Plunge engrossingly, Newton had no

Procreation time … Now,

Love-life studies avow,

Every Apple’s fertility’s foe!

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly and other journals. In 2025 he won the Children’s Unpublished category of the Eyelands Book Awards with Flora’s Flock and Other Stories to Read Aloud. “The poem was prompted by the CNN story Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause.”