So for the young writers here, that's
a poem about fucking an insect--
[LAUGHTER]
Which is the worthy subject of poems.
And ecological to boot.
[LAUGHTER]
This is called "To the Mulberry Tree".
Are mulberries around here, do they grow?
OK, yeah.
Where I'm from up in Pennsylvania,
that's one of our fruit, and they're everywhere,
and they're really prolific.
I'm going to tell you before I start this one too,
I made the mistake of reading this poem
to a group of little kids.
[LAUGHTER]
"To the Mulberry Tree".
"Everyone knows it's good luck, if inconvenient,
when a bird shits on you.
But even more so good luck if the bird shits on you
when you're plucking gold currant tomatoes sweet enough
to make your bare feet lift just so
off the ground and the beetles beneath scurry and giggle.
And as I move to gobble one, mouth agape
and swooped in a grin at once, this shit slurries half
in and half on my sun-warmed chin, which forgive me,
jiggles me from my reverie, for I am only human.
Swiping the slurp of turd from my mouth
to see it is mostly purple, the goop seedy and gelatinous.
And when I see the bird pitching its swill
from the branch above, I know that, yes, this shit is mostly
berry from that most prolific of trees, which
some numbskulls call a weed because it's so prolific
and not, they say, particularly useful.
These same, some call insipid, the mulberry's flavor,
which I think means tasteless or bland.
But given, I detect, swirled in the shit, the sweet
of the thing, it simply doesn't fit the bill
but rather most likely describes the sex life of the describer.
But why should I get personal, defending the trees' honor?
Mostly, I'm happy the birds feast on the top
most branches of these tall trees and leave be for the time
being my blueberries and soon blackberries and grapes
and these little tomatoes.
Though to be sure, it is a certain glee as spring gasps
into summer and the lowest branches
shimmer with their simple booty, which I must jump for
and sometimes high, which I will not probably always be
able to do, for jumping and grabbing at once like this,
a soft thing is hard.
Be gentle, she said, emerging from the dugout
beneath the mulberry tree, where the big kids gathered.
And we mostly rode our bikes by fast so as
not to be snatched to the ground and pummeled or worse,
for they were teenagers.
But I knew this early July morning
they would be nowhere to be found.
And the tree would be burdened with a crop begging
to be loosed on my ice cream.
She wiped her eyes and yawned and put on glasses.
And there was in her hair, a little sprig of grass.
And she was barefoot, laughing and filling
with me slowly my bucket, eating a few when it was full,
giggling at the small burst of juice one made on her chin.
And behind her, beneath the tree,
there was a filthy blanket and a pack of cigarettes and tin foil
wrappers crumpled and shimmering and the frayed remnants
of a rope.
And seeing me seeing into the terrible future,
she put softly one hand on my chin and the other in my hair,
turning my head away from what wreckage waited in there.
And back into the leaves, which too, I
will do to you so that none of us will ever die terribly,
but stay always like this, lips and fingers
blushed purple, the faint sugar ghosting our mouths,
beneath the tree inside me, which is now
the same tree inside you.
All of us snugged in the canopy on our tippy-toes,
gathering fruit for good."