Fruit (Poem)

Fruit

1 First

“She’s like an apple
in a water balloon,”
the doctor says. They watch

their fruit unfold across
the screen in light movements.
Submerged beneath her sea

enclosed by silent walls,
slow fluid breaths inspire
her ripening, baptize

the room in innocence.
Within this matrix
of tranquility,

they sense her beckoning
through sound’s translucent waves,
calling from her still place

into time’s raging sea
for a Return. Then Light
ripples from around her world

as from the Garden tree
whence God called Adam
and questioned why His Seed
had grown so ripe with blood.

2 Last

Within their yellow tree
atop a falling hill,
still shades of spring shadow

the waiting fruit. Chilled rains
stagnate in micro-seas
about their stems, throw drops

of ripened dew across
his face as he climbs
upward, pulls the apples,

and drops them
to her waiting hands.
Pale bruises hide beneath

the golden skin, some from
their gathering, some from
tussles with rough branches

and hungry birds, and some
born from the inside-out
of parasitic guile.

Holding his breath,
he cradles the last fruit
as naked branches steal
the blood from his cold hand.

3 Return

The pair, fallen with years,
returns to their garden,
straining for shades of green

within withered gold.
Arm in arm, they step
beneath their tree

and rest against the trunk.
His eyes pursue the land
into a blurry field

and hers cover his face
in reminiscent strokes.
As the sun departs his gaze,

dark winds carry
the breath of swollen fruit,
pooled around their feet. He sighs;

she leans against his arm
and waits with him as night
folds across his frame.

Her tears swell with their fruit,
distilling through Earth’s skin
into the flowing blood
of their generations’ veins.

Originally published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 39:3 (2006):146-8.