If we listened, we might hear their tearing:
the taut skin pierced,
tart flesh mangled to juice.
A kind not sold in supermarkets.
The windfalls lined our landing sill; put there by Dad
to hurl at cats who dared trespass.
Gardening was a chore for him. He cut the hedge,
mowed grass, kept trees in trim.
From that window we could contemplate
the lumpy ground, punctuated
by unsure fruitfulness.
Somehow love of it rubbed off unrecognized.
* * *
Consider the skill of pruning: how to learn
not everything can be revived,
that what you plant should be no less
miraculous than the tree cut down.
Steeped in autumn’s raspberry twilight,
we sort the last pickings
from Mum’s one-time realm, a far-end greenhouse.
I brush the trellised vines,
smell their terpene fragrance.
Side-shoots pinched out to train the energy of growth.
This the inheritance we think we know,
but forget to notice.
v. 2023
