Free stone and cling stone, stone fruits
Of the drupes, the peach pit set
On the sill until it’s bone,
Sour cherries pitted for pies,
These are small parts of the worlds
You’ve known, elaborately
Detailed in their words and whorls,
Not always too trivial
(The burst of the just-plucked peach,
Or of cherries from the bowl
The neighbor brought from her trees,
The encounter with a bear
Gorging itself in those trees
To survive coming winter,
The tall, skinny cherry tree
Feral in the spruce and pine
Not far from the bear’s den,
The industries of peach trees,
Commercial cherries, pickers
Laboring all day for cheap,
Hoping their children can stay
In the country of their birth,
Get an education, not
End up as cherry pickers)
Strategies on strategies,
Fruit with pits to propagate,
Animals swallowing pits
Depositing them elsewhere,
Animals selecting trees
With the largest, sweetest fruit,
Cling stone, free stone, discarding
The pits in trash, dry on sills.
Saturday, September 30, 2023
The Pits
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30 Sep 23
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