Risa Bear’s “Wassail” follows a woman moving through an apple harvest, from early Gravensteins in July to later varieties like Cortland and Honeycrisp. She cooks some into spiced apple butter and presses most into juice, hanging the pomace from a maple branch with her father’s pulley and rope. The details are warm and practical—crockpots, quart jars, burlap bags—and they build a mood of quiet abundance and seasonal continuity. There is satisfaction in the work, but also tenderness, especially in the inherited tools and the final image of singing to the trees. The title points to the old custom of wassailing orchards, blessing the trees for a good crop, which gives the ending a quiet sense of magic and gratitude. The poem reads less like duty than like a yearly ritual rooted in fruit, memory, and care.
Wassail — Summary
In August, but this year in July, Gravensteins: golden fleshed, generous, kind to cook, ciderer and ring-dryer. She tries everything, but mostly butter: a large crockpotful of peeled rings, quartered, lightly cloved, cinnamoned and nutmegged will make six pints and one short jelly jar. After
that, the old Egremont Russet, Cortland, Honeycrisp and Jonagold come all together; what can she do but slice them all in quarters, toss them into her dedicated shredder, pour pomace into a burlap bag and hang that, with her father's pulley and old hemp rope, to a maple branch?
Juice will run for hours, collecting in a tub beneath; at evening she dips gold, pouring through filter and funnel into quarts -- forty-five glass jars or more, most years. Last, she'll think of cider (but not too much), making in a cool jug by adding wine yeast. In seven days or less she will sing to trees.