To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian
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To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian
Tumbling through the city in my mind without once looking up
The racket and the lug work, probably rehearsing
Some stupid thing I said or did, some crime or other
The city, they say, is a lonely place until, yes, the sound of
Sweeping, and a woman, yes, with a broom, beneath which you are now
Too, the canopy of a fig, its arms pulling the September sun to it
And she has a hose too, and so works hard rinsing and scrubbing
The walk, lest some poor sod slip on the silk of a fig and break
His hip and not, probably, reach over to gobble up the perpetrator
The light catches the veins in her hands when I ask about the tree
They flutter in the air, and she says
"Take as much as you can help me"
So I load my pockets and mouth and she points to the
Stepladder against the wall to mean more, but I was
Without a sack, so my meager plunder would have to suffice
And an old woman whom gravity was pulling into the earth, loosed one
From a low-slung branch and its eye wept like hers, which she dabbed
With a kerchief as she cleaved the
Fig with what remained of her teeth
And soon there were eight or nine people gathered beneath the tree
Looking into it like a constellation, pointing, "Do you see it?"
And I am tall, and so good for these things, and a bald man
Even told me so when I grabbed three or four for him
Reaching into the giddy throngs of yellow jackets, sugar stone
Which he only pointed to, smiling and rubbing his stomach
I mean, he was really rubbing his
Stomach, like there was a baby in there
It was hot, his head shone while he offered recipes to the group
Using words which I couldn't understand, and besides, I was
A little tipsy on the dance of the velvety heart rolling in my
Mouth, pulling me down and down into the oldest countries of
My body, where I ate my first fig from the hand of a man who
Escaped his country by swimming through the night, and maybe
Never said more than five words to me at once, but gave me figs
And a man on his way to work hops twice to reach at
Last his fig, which he smiles at and calls "baby"
"Come here, baby!" he says, and blows a kiss to the tree
Which everyone knows cannot grow this far north, being
Mediterranean and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils of Jordan
And Sicily, but no one told the fig tree or the immigrants
There is a way the fig tree grows in
Groves, it wants, it seems, to hold us
Yes, I am anthropomorphizing, goddammit, I have twice in the last 30
Seconds rubbed my sweaty forearm into someone else's sweaty shoulder
Gleeful, eating out of each other's hands on Christian Street in
Philadelphia, a city, like most, which has murdered its own people
This is true, we are feeding each other from
A tree at the corner of Christian and 9th
Strangers, maybe, never again