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This is called "To the Fig
Tree on 9th and Christian."

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And this is in Philadelphia.

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It's a Philadelphia poem.

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Tumbling through the city in my
mind without once looking up,

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the racket and the
lug work probably

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rehearsing some stupid
thing I said or did,

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some crime or other.

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The city, they say, is a
lonely place until, yes,

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the sound of sweeping, and
a woman, yes, with a broom,

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beneath which you are
now too, the canopy

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of a fig, its arms pulling
the September sun to it.

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And she has a hose
too, and so works hard

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rinsing and scrubbing the
walk, lest some poor sod

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slip on the silk of a
fig and break his hip

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and not probably reach over
to gobble up the perpetrator.

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The light catches the
veins in her hands.

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When I ask about the tree,
they flutter in the air,

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and she says, take
as much as you can.

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Please.

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Help me.

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So I load my pockets
and mouth and she

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points to the stepladder
against the wall to mean more,

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but I was without a sack
so my meager plunder

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would have to suffice.

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And an old woman
whom gravity was

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pulling into the Earth
loosed one from a low slung

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branch and its eye
wept like hers,

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which she dabbed with
a kerchief as she

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cleaved the fig with what
remained of her teeth.

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And soon there were
eight or nine people

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gathered beneath the
tree, pointing, looking

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into it like a constellation.

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Do you see it?

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And I am tall.

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It's so good for these things.

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And a bald man even told me so
when I grabbed three or four

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for him, reaching into the
giddy throngs of yellow jackets,

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sugar stone which he only
pointed to smiling and rubbing

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his stomach.

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I mean, he was really
rubbing his stomach

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like there was a baby in there.

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It was hot.

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His head shone while
he offered recipes

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to the group using words
which I couldn't understand,

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and besides, I was a
little tipsy on the dance

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of the velvety heart
rolling in my mouth,

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pulling me down and
down into the oldest

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countries of my
body, where I ate

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my first fig from the
hand of a man who escaped

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his country by swimming
through the nights,

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and maybe never said more
than five words to me at once,

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but gave me figs.

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And a man on his way to
work hops twice to reach,

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at last, his fig which he
smiles at and calls baby.

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Come here, baby he says, and
blows a kiss to the tree,

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which everyone knows cannot
grow this far North being

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Mediterranean and favoring the
rocky sun-baked soils of Jordan

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and Sicily.

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But no one told the fig
tree or the immigrants.

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There was a way the fig
tree grows and grows.

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It wants, it seems, to hold us.

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Yes, I am anthropomorphizing,
God damn it.

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I have twice, in
the last 30 seconds,

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rubbed my sweaty forearm into
someone else's sweaty shoulder,

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gleeful, eating out
of each other's hands

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on Christian street
in Philadelphia,

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a city like most which has
murdered its own people.

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This is true.

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We are feeding each
other from a tree

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at the corner of
Christian and 9th,

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strangers maybe never again.

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