First Fruit

In those days we ate abundantly

of fig and avocado, tamarind and mango,

apple, pomegranate and passion fruit.

At Luquillo, we cut open the tough-skinned

coconut, drank its salty water with a reed.

In those days no others walked the beach.

Small donkeys with distended bellies

bore long green sheaves of sugarcane.

Cockatoos and parrots nagged from trees.

When fresh-baked sand baked our bare feet,

we ran to ripples along the shore—

a shore that stretched forever by the sea.

Then we bathed naked—ab origine—

as shadows from the palms lay down.

Pious Hindus believe it a crime

to harm them. For trees

yield seeds, flowers, and fruits.

Provide shade in parks

and places of pilgrimage.

Sanction will befall

those who cut

even small branches

or sprouts. In Varanasi,

pipal trunks — untouched

by blade or ax — push

like pregnancies

through walls

of shanties and huts.

You’ve named me: malice,

malignant ripple on water and earth.

You’ve said I am death.

I say I am nature, made

secret, evening in a nest among hens,

foe to frogs harrumphing in a pond.

Isn’t it enough I scrape flat-bellied, slide

among dead leaves and dung?

Like you, I want to linger in the sun,

calligraphy on a country road.

My tongue – bellwether – senses

wind like a finger, reads disaster.

Hither thither. Undercover.

Cold stone: my prison. Fear: my cell.

Woman wants

what her heart hears—

tree rustle, a flutter,

summer in the orchard—

and bites into flesh,

an hour’s sweetness, bloom-

dusted scion. The Sky is fire.

Mouth awry (a bitter

spitter), skin mottled

with flyspeck

and sooty blotch,

Eve treks past autumn

fruit-fall, weight bent, down

a wilderness.