for Leslie Lasher Monsour
On frozen sill of winter house,
White gone lavender with chill,
Alligator pears, la gringuita’s southern gift
Set out to soak in warm supposed sun.
Translocated avocados, transplanted avocations:
Monday in a palm’s clattering headdress
In the California patio of mi comadre
Sung to jazzy zenith
By mockingbirds’ backyard jam;
Tuesday in a roar
Of cardboard at cruising altitude;
Wednesday in solstice window,
In shortest darkest light,
A thunderstorm of snow.
Avocado skins burn green against the ice,
Lurid rinds all vivid in the void,
Carmen Miranda angelinas,
Embarrassing burst of salsa verde
Too-loud chili-hot.
*****
On summer hillside, greengages:
Your breasts surprised,
A woman grafted to the fawn,
The shaded startled eye, the uneven legginess
Of one too soon without the doe:
The suddenness then of knowing
Just how, years before,
The boy we both then loved loved you,
Your body untouched then
(except by him, he said you said)
since then fruiting two surprising yields.
When you expected the first one,
I set in soil a northern avocado
With one large trunk, and one promising sucker
Blessed to your increase,
Here grown to ten years thin and will not bear.
I look over the whited landscape,
Smooth in my mouth the meal butter-warm of you:
Parrot-yellow fleshy cuttle,
Rich neon pudding the color of limes,
Sample tropical lyrics
Ripening green stone hearts in winter.