"Ficus carica" poem by MOIRA EGAN, U.S.A.-Italy. "Dance of Desire" Fine Art Photo by ADEL GORGY, U.S.A.

Link: http://www.adelgorgy.com/

 

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Ficus carica

 

  In this country

it’s a tradition

to make a wish upon

  the first bite

of the season’s fruit,

the first peach, cherry, nectarine,

  cachi, so as I peel this

first fig, slowly pull its skin away

like a mammalian membrane,

  I make the wish

 

  that each of our

days might have some of

that taste of reunion

  after long

absence, the salty-

sweet homecoming kiss, the airport

  embarrassment of laughing

and crying both into each other’s

shirts. And it seems to me the fig

  is the perfect

 

  embodiment

of all the above,

the fruit of yin and yang,

  masculine

in shape, yet deeply

feminine in its opening;

  how, on the one hand, it was

a tree like this under which Buddha

sat and found enlightenment, while

  on the other,

 

  these were the leaves

that Adam reached for

to clothe their humanness

  when they saw

that they were naked

and learned of shame. How many fruits

  acquire their musky sweetness

from the strange symbiosis of wasp

and worm? I don’t know, but I think

  of the first figs  

 

  of that summer

when we met, how he

carefully peeled the fruit,

  offered me

the sweet and strangely

tentacular flesh, almost too

  ripe but not quite, and he kissed me

and church bells clamored out the Angelus

and he kissed me again and (yes)

  I made a wish.   

 

 

Moira Egan

(First appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Winter 2008)

 

Link: http://moiraegan.com/