How easily the spirit worms its way into matter,

The perfect pitch, say, of this plum,

Curved and creased, throbbing with the slapped

 

Tincture of a newborn’s cheeks, the on-call doctor

Already exhausted from his rounds,

The mother worn down from her dark labor,

 

The night nurse already worried about

Her husband’s lover who will not speak

To her or anyone of her long years

 

As a single mother, and there it is again

Before the world screams in: Round

And round again, this California plum,

 

4040 USA about the size of a kid’s

Thumbprint stickered on one side

To give it the FDA AOK.

 

It is one thing to regard from some slight

Distance the pith and pit of the matter,

Another to bite right in:

 

Sweet toothy pulp, yellow-green grin.

I spit the almond of its center, bits of flesh

Still stuck to it. No way it will survive

 

To blossom in some theatrical distance of sky

Beneath which there is no new Du Fu—

Not, anyway, in Ashland, Ohio—

 

Though if there were I would christen him

The manager of a landfill.

Packing his pipe, sweetening his tea,

 

Musing on the plum tree’s wistful petals,

How gladly he receives

Each Monday’s pick-up. What are the odds

 

For each single seed? So many poems

Of blossoms and plum trees!

Even the Son of Man sorrows on them:

 

Each morning he must eat one ripe fig,

Else he cannot shit. Oh, the sorry fate

Of each Romantic’s a hemorrhoid or two:

 

Not even plums can help them

Though they wait in our markets

By the thousands, dyed to perfection,

 

Little Buddhas, tight little packages,

Waiting to fill a mouth.

If ever there were such a thing

 

As poetic justice, he said with aplomb. 

Not one leaf. If I sat beneath

The blossoms of the plum tree I would stroke

 

The wisp of my long beard and strike a match. Not

In this state of things. Sweet cherry wafts

To 112th and Amsterdam. Rigor mortis

 

Of rush hour sets in. Once on my way

To where I once lived, the only motion

In the entire galaxy was some shared spasm

 

Involving a stranger and a baby, some cabbie

In the bottle-neck, the flash of my two year old

Glassed in, my daughter delighted by the sudden

 

Wheel of him. Light after light,

He rubbed his face with his hand. It matters

Nothing to me whether he was or was not

 

A good citizen. The fat day sang

Its usual hymn. The traffic burped and farted:  

What does it take to make the dead man grin?

 

Before the teeth sink in,

Round and round and round

And round again.