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A Cowboy Contemplates the Shape of Figs

By Meredith Lang

An old cowboy, rough as the
rocky ground and
angled as a fence post,
roughened by the range
he used to ride,
runs his knobbed fingers
down the deep creases
of his face, traces the
canyon lines of his hands
that shakes as he handles
the figs his wife has bought,
unlike in their surface
from rope and reins;
he cannot fathom                                                                                                                                                   
that one would eat
as strange a fruit as figs                                                                                                                               
whose sensual shape,
smooth and rounded,
evokes a forbidden
femininity, inside the
female flower, with seeds
of fruit and life;
The cowboy did not
know these things
in the masculine solitude
of desert and plain,
did not know these things
that his wife once
contained therein,
in the feminine
closeness of
forest and glen;
could not see
the intimate seeds
of the fig
growing in the forest
through the vastness
of the desert;
at one time
had desert and plain
left their seclusion to
enter forest and glen,
then the fig would have
been known by its seeds;
time wears all things out,
and assigns all things their place;
he did not learn to know the fig then,
and he still does not know it now.
So, these figs, strange to him
as they sit in their bowl,
as misplaced as he
in this kitchen, gleaming
counters and cupboards;
he cuts open the fig,
the inside opens suggestively,
red seeds pulsing,
juice on his hands, the gleaming counter;
he hides his shudder
from his wife, as she chides him,
leaning over to gather the broken fruit,
the roundness of her breasts and
the fruits and the knowledge
of lost things
were caught uncomfortably                                                                     
in the light from the window
that allowed runaway beams
from the sun rising over the ridge.

 

Meredith Lang is from Rixford, Pennsylvania and now lives one county over in Roulette. She majored in special education and literacy and still works in the field of education. She enjoys writing (surprise!), yoga and fitness, photography, cooking, and plucking strings on her banjo and mandolin. More of her writing can be found on her blog, Minor Thoughts, as well as other literary journals and blogs. She can also be found lurking on Twitter and Facebook.

Filed Under: 2021 Issue, Poetry

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