Rock Figs

ROCK FIGS


A kind of liquid in the form of a tree
something like a rubber-plant to touch,
ficus platypoda? or is it brachypoda?
an argument persists like the podded-tree;
for a Desert Fig's roots percolate
down sand crevasses off-rock that makes
skillion roof and gable ends and spouting
for wetness kept below of any substantial rain,
down to which water the resolute fig-root finds
to lift up as fig-blood inside itself
like heated coffee through a steamer
up to the filling cup and its head
of leaf and flower-berry to rise up above
the flowing lines of the tree-pot
to flower-bud out into tight sweet fruit
on the outspread rigid branched vine
budded and swollen
with raisin-sized rounds of figs,
and with figs that dry like raisins,
a just sweet fruit of substantial meal
but so good for a portable bodily salvation
from the long-cloudless torrid zone
of everlasting tough-slaked thirsts,
from the eternal hunger of the desert,
with the gifts of wild prodigality
and of a graced provenance
in lasting providence.

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