Here, have some fruit

A poem about generosity

Photo by Kateryna T on Unsplash

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A new poem, harvested fresh this month, and for indiscernible reasons I’ve decided it’s a Thanksgiving piece. You’re welcome. And I wish you could taste the persimmon pudding — more like a rich moist cake really — that my sister bakes at this time of year.

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THREE PERSIMMONS                                            2024


Saturday’s afternoon light slants toward darkness
and I am sweeping the courtyard around my church,
when in with the November leaves comes drifting
one of the neighborhood’s pilgrim souls, pleased
that I recall her name, hoping to go inside
to make her prayers. The door is locked
but I have a key, and while I climb the steps
she roots in her backpack, tucks three persimmons
into a plastic sack, and holds them out to me
as the church door swings open. They aren’t ripe yet,
she tells me, put them with an apple in a paper bag
and leave them by a window till they’re soft.
I thank her, exclaiming; she offers me a fourth persimmon
which I decline; she disappears inside the church,
emerges moments later to wave and drift away,
still on her pilgrimage. I finish sweeping,
climb the steps once more, enter the church myself
to listen for her prayer, to add my own;
I find no words, hear nothing but my footsteps
whispering to the floorboards as I pace the aisle.

And now three days have passed, and three persimmons
sit still in their plastic sack on my kitchen table,
and if I can find no words I ought at least to find
an apple to befriend them, a brown-paper sanctuary
to shelter them along their way, their pilgrimage
to ripening, to readiness, to being-gift.

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