After the fruit I can pick easily
And savor in season; after gleaning
Everything overripe I’ve overlooked
Hidden among dense leaves;
After regretting so much I’ve missed,
Black lumps rotted in the dirt;
Now that the tree should be slowing down,
More green nubs have begun to ripen,
Despite less sunlight and shorter afternoons.
It will be an unexpected blessing
To eat the last sweet figs of the year
With a slight sheen of frost on them.
Don Thompson has been publishing since the early sixties with several books and chapbooks in this century. His collection, Back Roads, won the 2008 Sunken Garden Poetry Prtize. His recent works include Keeping and Eye on the Stones, prose poems from Katywompus Press, and Local Color, a book length narrative poem from Aldrich Books.