Poem of the Day: rubicund

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Today's word is

Mmm, I like this word. Makes me think of chubby cherubim, and other rosy, rotund creatures. Unfortunately, it also makes me think of the Rubicon, and I do believe one or five people have already written about that. Besides, what does that have to do with redness? Did Caesar blush when he crossed it?

*****
Friday, 10:15 p.m.

Serendipity:
two free peach trees in November.

Apparently, saplings do not sell
once they lose most of their leaves
for the winter.

We had two left in Floral,
two dormant peach saplings,
each with just one or two rusty spears
clinging to its otherwise nude branches,
their color hinting at the promise
of sweet, rubicund globes
next summer.

They were past their profitability.
They had been written off.
I took them home to save them
from winter starving in a plastic pot
or the harsh reincarnation offered
by the compost bin.

One I will keep in a pot on my balcony.
One I will plant on the street.

An old Yankee woman down the street
who never smiles,
who ignores all greetings,
and who has a small dog
who yaps angrily at every stranger
who threatens to love her uninvited,
has a mature peach tree.

At one point near September,
it bent with the weight
of hundreds of green fruit.

One day,
as each youth-colored ball
was just beginning to blush,
my downstairs neighbor and I, separately --
on separate walks, at separate times of day --
each dared to compliment the owner
on her crop.
(We only found out during a later chat.)

She acknowledged
neither of us.
The next day,
the crop was gone,
apparently having
been harvested
in full,
in one day,
unripe.

There are only two reasons I know
to harvest an entire crop
of summer peaches
green.

The first is ignorance.
Fruit separated from the tree too young
will never gain full sweetness
or nutritional value,
though it will soften
to a point of edibility.

This false ripeness is sold in stores
where fruit has been picked young far away
so that it might survive unbruised
its journey to distant locations
where such fruit is not grown
and people don't know
what it's supposed to taste like,
what summer sugar fresh from the earth and sun
is supposed to taste like,
how sweet, sun-warm juice is supposed
to burst out of tender, slightly fuzzy flesh,
and dribble down ecstatic summer chins,
onto fingers made for stickiness,
how generous summer fruit
is supposed to be.

The other reason,
of course,
is fear.

There's a lot to fear when you have
a burgeoning crop of summer peaches
about to come ripe.
Birds might get them.
Children might steal them.
Your neighbors might admire them,
and you might have to fear further
that they are not just happy
for your good fortune,
but actually might also be
expecting you
to share it with them.
On the other hand,
thirsting at the end of a dry season,
not having been given enough,
maybe they'll simply fall off
of their own accord
and rot on the ground.

I have nothing on this earth to fear.
I have been given two free peach trees,
in November.

I will pot one on my balcony.
I will plant the other on the street.

I do not know if they will bear.
If they bear,
I do not know if it will happen
while I still live here.
But if they bear, whenever they bear,
the birds and my neighbors can have their fill,
as can any passerby,
including the old Yankee woman down the street
and her angry fluffy dog,
should either find herself
wandering up the road this far
and feeling peckish.