"This one has a stem!"
He held an orange
from the grocery store bag,
swaying, pendulous,
on its slender bit of tree,
come stowaway from California
on the fruit truck.
"It's so thin!
How does it hold the orange?"
As so often,
a response,
served out at my
inconvenience
to feed a child's
insistent mind-hunger,
answered hunger I'd forgotten
was mine too -
"When the orange was small
the stem held it,
every day the stem grew strong
with the orange."
I answered from the kitchen sink,
rinsing knives free of soap,
hands dripping,
mind kindling,
Have I grown strong?
Children are heavy fruit.
When the ripe days come,
Will I be strong enough to let go?
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1 comment:
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing
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