Fruit Salad

“I love you” is a lullaby
Lull me to sleep with the butterfly thrum of
steel on steel on wood on mango flesh
My tongue salivates for
Peach pits and persimmons
Trickling with                       sweet summer sap;
Elixir for the gods
“I love you” was never the song of goldfinches
Instead I grow up listening
To the rough-hewn symphony of
Callused hands chopping fruit salad
clementine and banana slices
In the Soviet Union, bananas were a luxury,
So you charted a course
Flew red white and blue polyester half-mast
to a land paved with gold and candy
Crying out “I love you,” when the hull struck Brighton shore
Pomegranate seed
lodged in your throat a caged bird singing
Semi-Russian semi-English semi-Yiddish
Hymn for a country that barely blinked at your embrace
But your song is enough for me