Ah the persimmon, a word from an extinct language of the Powatan people of the tidewater Virginia, spoken until the mid 18th C when its Blackfoot Indian speakers switched to English. It was putchamin, pasiminan, or pessamin, then persimmon, a fruit. Like the tomato, it is a ‘true berry’.
 
Here in this postcard we have a painting of four kaki: the Japanese persimmon. Of these four fruit, one is nearly ripe; three are yet to ripen. They have been picked three days and shelter under crinkled leaves, still stalked. Now, the surface on which these astringent, tangy fruit rest, isn’t it wondrous in its blue and mottled green? It is veined, a ceramic surface perhaps? The blue-green mottled, veined surface catches reflected light; the shadows are delicate but intense.
 
You told me that it troubled you to read my stories because so often they stepped between reality and fantasy, truth and playful invention. When you said this I meant to say (but we changed the subject): I write this way to confront what I know to be true but cannot present verbatim. I have to make into a fiction my remembered observations, those intense emotions of the moment. They are too precious not to save, and like the persimmon benefit from laying out in the sun to dry: to be eaten raw; digested to rightly control my ch’i, and perhaps your ch’i too.
 
So today a story about four kaki, heart-shaped hachiya, and hidden therein those most private feelings, messages of love and passion, what can be seen, what is unseen, thoughts and un-thoughts, mysteries and evasions.
 
                                                                            ----
 
 
Professor Minoru retired last year and now visits his university for the occasional show of his former colleagues and their occasionally-talented students. He spends his days in his suburban house with its tiny non-descript garden: a dog run, a yard no less. No precious garden. It is also somewhere (to his neighbours’ disgust) to hang wet clothes. It is just grass surrounded by a high fence. He walks there briefly in the early morning before making tea and climbing the stairs to his studio.
 
The studio runs the whole length of his house. When his wife Kinako left him he obliterated any presence of her, left his downtown studio, and converted three rooms upstairs into one big space. This is where Mosuku, his beautiful Akita, sleeps, coming downstairs only to eat and defecate in the small garden. Minoru and Mosuku go out twice each day: to midday Mass at the university chaplaincy; to the park in the early evening to meet his few friends walking their dogs. Otherwise he is solitary except for three former students who call ‘to keep an eye on the old man’.
 
He works every day. He has always done this, every day. Even in the busiest times of the academic year, he rose at 5.0am to draw, a new sheet of mitsumatagami placed the night before on his worktable ready. Ready for the first mark.
 
Imagine. He has climbed the stairs, tea in his left hand, sits immediately in front of this ivory-coloured paper, places the steaming cup to his far left, takes a charcoal stick, and  . . . the first mark, the mark from the world of dreams, memories, regrets, anxieties, whatever the night has stored in his right hand appears, progresses, forms an image, a sketch, as minutes pass his movement is always persistence, no reflection or studied consideration, his sketch is purposeful and wholly his own. He has long since learnt to empty his hand of artifice, of all memory.
 
When Kinako left he destroyed every trace of her, and of his past too. So powerful was his intent to forget, he found he had to ask the way to Shinjuko station, to his studio in the university. He called in a cleaning company to remove everything not in two boxes in the kitchen (of new clothes, his essential documents, 5 books, a plant, Mosuko’s feeding bowl). They were told (and paid handsomely) to clean with vigour. Then the builders and decorators moved in. He changed his phone number and let it be known (to his dog walker friends) that he had decided from now on to use an old family name, Sawato. He would be Sawato. And he was.
 
His wife, and she was still that legally, had found a lover. Kinako was a student of Professor Minoru, nearly thirty years younger, and a fragile beauty. She adored ‘her professor’, ‘her distinguished husband’, but one day at an opening (at Kinosho Kikaku – Gallery 156) she met an American artist, Fern Sophie Citron, and that, as they say in Japan, was that. She went back to Fern’s studio, where this rather plump middle-aged woman took photographs of Kinako relentlessly in costume after costume, and then without any costume, on the floor, in the bath, against a wall, never her whole body, and always in complete silence. Two days later she sent a friend to collect her belongings and to deliver a postcard to her husband. It was his painting of four persimmon. Persimmon (1985) 54 by 36 cm, mineral pigment on paper.
 
‘Hiroshi’, she wrote in red biro, ‘I am someone else now it is best you do not know. Please forgive’.
 
Sawato’s bedroom is on the ground floor now. There is a mat that is rolled away each morning. On the floor there are five books leaning against each other in a table-top self-standing shelf. The Rule of St Benedict (in Latin), The I-Ching (in Chinese), The Odes of Confucius, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (10th C folk tale) and a manual of Go, the Shogi Zushiki. Placed on a low table there is a laptop computer connected to the Internet, and beside the computer his father’s Go board (of dark persimmon wood), its counters pebbles from the beach below his family’s home. Each game played on the Internet he transcribes to his physical board.
 
He ascribes his mental agility, his calm and perseverance in his studio practice, to his nightly games of Go in hyperspace. He is an acknowledged master. His games studied assiduously, worldwide.
 
For 8 months in 1989 he studied the persimmon as still-life. He had colleagues send him examples of the fruit from distant lands. The American Persimmon from Virginia, the Black Persimmon or Black Sapote from Mexico (its fruit has green skin and white flesh, which turns black when ripe), the Mabolo or Velvet-apple native to Philippines - a bright red fruit when ripe, sometimes known as the Korean Mango, and more and more. His studio looked like a vegetable store, persimmons everywhere. He studied the way the colours of their skins changed every day. He experimented with different surfaces on which to place these tannin-rich fruits. He loved to touch their skins, and at night he would touch Kinako, his fingers rich from the embrace of fifty persimmon fruits, and she . . . she had never known such gentleness, such strength, such desire. It was as though he painted her with his body, his long fingers tracing the shape of the fruit, his tongue exploring each crevice of her long, slim, fruit-rich body. She had never been loved so passionately, so completely. At her desk in the University library special collection, where she worked as a researcher for a fine art academic journal, she would dream of the night past and anticipate the night to come, when, always on her pillow a different persimmon, she would fall to ****** and beyond.
 
Minoru drew and painted, printed and photographed more persimmons than he could keep track of. After six months he picked seven paintings, and a collection of 12 drawings. The rest he burnt. When he exhibited these treasures, Persimmon (1989) Mineral pigment on paper 54, by 36 cm was immediately acquired by Tokyo National Museum. It became a favourite reproduction, a national treasure. He kept seeing it on the walls of houses in magazines, cheap reproductions in department stores, even on a TV commercial. Eventually he dismissed it, totally, from his ever-observant, ever-scanning eyes. So when Kinako sent him the postcard he looked at it with wonder and later wrote this poem in his flowing hand using the waka style:
 
 
*Ah, the persimmon
Lotus fruit of the Gods
 
Heartwood of a weaver’s shuttle,
The archer’s bow, the timpanist sticks,
 
I take a knife to your ripe skin.
Reveal or not the severity of my winter years.

My father and I
lie down together.

He is dead.

We look up at the stars,
the steady sound
of the wind turning
the night like a ceiling fan.

This is our home.

I remember the work in him
like bitterness in persimmons
before the first frost,
and I imagine the way he feared
the pain, the ground turning
dark in the rain.

Now he gets up
and I dream he looks down
into my brown eyes
that may as well been his.

He weeps and says goodbye,
my son, I don't want to
go yet, but I can't wait
around to watch you die.

We fall hunting for laurels,
shredding

       our purple bruises
       into rose hips.

Our silversmith rings lose their fingers,
cracked irreparable.

       Our lives of lavish luxury
       lives as lapis lazuli.

The banks of the Ipswich
call out:

       silhouettes behind birch bark.
       Remember

how we used to swim
her waters;

       tread her auric ebb?
       We aim at deer, at ripening

persimmons. They chew
the fruit pretty.

       We aim at killdeer.
       Kiss a wasp.

We were dead fireworks
under Laniakea eyes.

       As midnight, we are
       films noir:

we imagine *******
Lauren Bacall from behind,

       speaking and kissing in tongues,
       her mouth tasting

of unfiltered smoke,
breathing the snow

       melting
       down her rose hips.

We stuff the stuff of nightmares
into a cardboard box.

       We howl at solar winds and polar vortexes.
       We are a vesica; both/and.

We fall hunting for laurels,
adolescent pulsars with persimmon eyes.

I am the flower that loves the bumblebee.

As he flits and flips and fluts between the daffodil-darlings,
flirting with the puckered tulip's twins,
dancing and dipping and diving between
the outstretched limbs of the persimmons.

I am the flower that loves the bumblebee.

Anticipating that moment when I am to be envied,
Patiently waiting to be loved at my turn,
before he is gone and on to another,
leaving me alone and hoping for his return.

I am the flower that loves the bumblebee.

Hopelessly devoted to a free-flying spirit,
whilst helplessly grounded amongst many
perhaps prettier,
perhaps,
but equally doomed to share him for eternity.

Honourable Younger Sister,

This village is a world of stone. Lanes, houses, courtyard walls, towers, pavilions, tables, benches are all hewn from ancient red rock. The stone streets are lustrous with the passage of feet and shine in the moonlight; tomorrow they will glisten in the morning rain. After six days on the path into the mountains I finally rest at this inn. Here I can buy light: to write in this loft whilst the house sleeps, though a dutiful daughter dozes against the foot of the stair-ladder to serve me should I require sustenance. Frightened by my ugliness I summoned up my sweetest voice for her and soon there was a shy smile and downcast eyes. These are long nights for the village poor, but few here as poor as those whose shelters I sought on the path. Tonight I miss the steaming breath and ceaseless rustle of the animals brought indoors for warmth and security. My travelling robes are already filthy, but my body remains clean. As soon as I depart each night’s shelter I search for a stream to strip and wash thoroughly in the ice-cold water.

Dear sister, we have both been taught that the function of letter-writing is to unburden the mind of its melancholy thoughts in the form of elegant colours; its purpose to state one’s feelings without reserve. My thoughts turn constantly on whether I have it in me to ‘summon the recluse’. Have I the stamina, the patience, the resolve to seek out these elusive souls? Such thoughts induce fear rather than melancholy, fear of failure.

Already my journey into these mountains has crossed the season of late autumn into that of early winter. I am told the russet-red leaves and pink berries of the Ash, the deceptive Rowan and speckled-leafed Lace set the mountainside alight as the sun rises into a clear sky. For me clouds hang all day in the steep valleys, and so hide the heights where the solitary ones are believed to live. They alone see with the dawn the mountain peaks aflame   It is only in the very late afternoon that the sun melts the clouds, breaks through, and enlivens the landscape, turning it gold, then amber, and a final dull red before the blue blackness of dusk descends. Beyond this village my sources tell me there is real wilderness, and paths are few. I am to be my own guide.

You and I are so adept at the play of words. Our honoured father encouraged us, and as custodian of the Imperial Archives he knew how words could be arranged to both conceal and reveal; we played with the characters as other children played with coloured stones. So with the poems we call “Chao Yin”, let us play with verb “Chao” as both to seek and to summon. Chu Hsi, a courtier of that prince of Huai-nan, was sent into the wilderness to summon an errant official back to his post. His poems speak of terrors of the mountains, their ‘murky depths sending shivers of fright’ of ‘the caves of leopards and tigers’, and of the deep forest where ‘a man climbs from fear’. The poetic form uses “Chao” as in the ancient ceremonial song “Chao ***”. This calls on a dead person’s soul to re-enter the body, so ‘a summoning of the soul’. In those times such poems argued against the recluse, the withdrawn one, and sought a return. Today there is this feeling abroad that we need to consort with the recluse, to taste his solitude. Does the solitary life speak of the ineffable Way? Or is it in the search for the solitary one that a moment of enlightenment may present itself? As the saying goes: ‘to travel one must surely uncover truth’. In my bones I feel ready to invert this old poetic form. I must summon the spirit of the recluse out of the mountain fastness, but not seek his return. I need to touch his ways, see evidence of his mountain life, for a while to walk his paths breathing the same air. In my heart I expect nothing but his absence. I foresee I may reach his shelter and find his gate ajar, though the embers of the hearth still warm. He will be on some distant peak gathering herbs. If on a precipitous path I was to turn a corner and find him before me I have no words prepared. For the moment it seems I am exploring an idea through this summoning and seeking, not a living, breathing body.

Tomorrow I shall reconnoitre. My official hairpin and staff will command any audience, but for reliable answers, I am far from confident. There is always talk, rumours, sightings. The common people respect these beings as kindly mountain spirits and guardians of the wilderness. At the fork in a path, by the crossing place of a stream, corn, persimmons and millet are left for them. Such offerings will be replaced in time by the rarest mountain herbs, wild fruits, the skin of leopard or bear.

Your last letter spoke of ‘following my path into the mountains’. You have always defied convention, so it would be no surprise to find you here on my return, although I think your Lord would not sanction it. He would find such a request unfathomable. I am still perplexed at your situation, that you, the most homely of women should be so favoured, so adorned, and yet so free. It is that confidence you hold to yourself.  

To me, you have always been the essence of woman. What knowledge I possess of your kind comes from you alone. The infrequent gropings that occasionally present themselves I have only dismissed. An hour in your company smoothes and stills both soul and body. Your movements and gestures are always quiet and true, as are your woven words that sing in my memory on the path.

I read your letter
And savoured your words,
Your sorrowful songs of separation.
I can almost imagine your face before me
And I sigh and sob out of control.
When will we meet again
To amuse ourselves with prose and verse?
How can I tell you of my misery
Except with these woven words?

Have I remembered your poem correctly? I expected no response to my own lines on our separation. On the very morning of my departure your scroll arrived. I delayed to read it, delaying further to know your words: to carry them in my memory on my journey. In our respective verse we follow the way of tradition: the lonely woman in her room; the man travelling far from home. How many thousand poems describe this antithesis?

My life has always been sheltered by the expectations of scholarship, the requirements of official rank, and more recently acclaim due to my songs and poems. This journey begins a new page, as a seeker and summoner. Follow my path deeper into the mountains, be at my side when I rest, calm my fear of the heights and the depths of dark ravines, reveal to me the words to paint the scene. Know that I share with you everything that is to come, without reservation.

Remember the words of Lun Yu: ‘The good man delights in mountains. The wise man delights in water’. In these mountains the sound of water is present everywhere.

A stony spring rinses bits of jade
Minnows now and then emerge, and disappear.
Here what need of my silk-strung gujin? –
The mountain water has its own crystal song.

Your brother Zuo Si

There are colors yet unknown in my finite view of Earth , artistic wonders undiscovered , to this day quite alone .. Geometric shapes where Sweetgum trees silhouette the majestic Dawn .. Enchantment with every turn go I , to study my religion by day , collect my thoughts and observations by night .. To interplay among life undiscovered  , to revel someday in its happenstance ... The weathered profiles of a million botanicals unknown or forgotten . An ocean whose riddles remain unsolved , seventy percent of our precious world where exploration has barely scratched the surface .. Dark , rainy afternoons reconfigured with burst of light , the surface of oceans ever mysterious , highlighted by the Moon on hazy nights .. I flew over Moccasin Creek to sample fresh water and take in mountain greenery ..Walked the treetops of the Oconee Forest to witness the floor of the woodlands as a squirrel , crow or eagle ..Slithered along the Georgia clay like a Black Racer , cautiously studied each image before me with the curiosity of a Red fox .. Enthralled with the Savannah Dancers of Tybee Island , precious gulls , blue ***** and brown pelicans .. Welcome every change of season , Dark pine thickets tell of death and renewal ...

                                                          II­
Jagged , blue grass approaches , green straw tops , quiet
cinnamon needle oceans connected by silver streak spider webbing ..
Warm winds divide earthen cover , lifeless termite ridden forefathers lay in testament to bitter destruction ... Our Noon star nourishes bold , sylvan seedlings , beneath her languishing February predicament however ... Grassy field roads lay locked in period of service , daylight path corrections , marble land buoy sentries within thistle , dandelion and Sawgrass .. Gold , knee high cover caresses , reaching skyward beside the field road , lying forgotten , left to the mercy of kudzu , marble and granite .. Scrags reclaim rusted encroachments , tin in battle with the tepid wail of afternoon wind as stick pines mimic the Appalachians , gently roll toward the awaiting lavender blue horizon ... As pasture returns to woodlands , blanketed in hues of brown with forest echoes , carry whispered voices into tomorrow ... Lively crows live to tell their wintry tale , resting among scuttled pulp wood entanglements , to be born again , covered in the pity of lingering broom sage ...                                                              ­                                                  

                                                        III    ­                                                                 ­Across the edge of twilight where soft lavender hues lay at
rest atop her riparian horizon .. Dandelion blooms pepper the
red clay embankments , lone bucks survey brown fields of harvested
corn ..Mourning doves cry for the end of day , wild hogs lay tracks at the rivers edge . Toms sing of their loneliness  , persimmons lay bitter along country lanes , the meat of Chestnut not harvested , the final years of tall , stately Pecans go shamefully unnoticed .. Barbed wire divisions etch Winter burned pasture , Morgans and Appaloosas graze the fertile , ambrosial green narrows .. Manmade pools dot the Crescent lady , cattle ditches appear along creeks and rivers holding Rock bass , Shell ******* , Yellowbellies and Bluegills ferociously hunting the waters surface , Alligator Snappers and Mudcats work the turbulent bottoms ... Hayfields , peach and muscadine arbors flourish , boiled peanuts and sorghum syrup , collards and sweet potatoes ...Blackberry , grape , watermelon and okra ..Water oaks have taken command of the front yard ,  moss and honeysuckle line fence rows , flowing patches of wild grass and snake berry , rocks from Cotton Indian Creeks line hand built flower beds and walkways .. Rhode Island Reds , Buff Orpington's and White Leghorns work these plantations . Sassafras and dewberry , wild plum and rabbit tobaccos . Gardenia , Crape Myrtle , Magnolia , Pine and Chestnut trees  flourish to this day .. The Old Bridge behind Millers Mill still visible , what stories this elder pass could tell before the confluence of the Indian Creeks .. Crayfish , Bream , Largemouth bass , Crappie , Yellow perch and Flathead catfish ! The tale of the Crescent lady lives forever and ever ..

“Consider me
As one who loved poetry
And persimmons”
–Shiki

As one who loved
Poetry and persimmons
Pomegranates and prose

Who visited
Keats’ nightingale tree
And Freud’s couch

Who stayed
Long after winter storms
Struck spirit with lightning

Who traveled
Beyond starry dusted night
To speak with spirits

Who survived
The ***** and peril
Of the provokers pike

Who rose
Not from clichéd ash
But from papery embers

Who wrote
Down every word
On lined parchment

Who seduced
Your very soul to squander
Its sentiment on one

Who gave
Of himself
Everything


[Note: This poem was originally published by Cadence Collective: https://cadencecollective.net/2015/10/27/consider-me/]

Biscuit and sorghum syrup happy faces with Georgia peach butter and blackberry muffins , childhood favorites that tickle the palette !
For a bag of Fall persimmons , a handful of roasted pecans I would gladly cross the Alcovy River naked as a jaybird !
Rutabagas , turnips and cracklin cornbread would be my staple of choice if marooned on an island , a Frosty Root beer and mothers egg custard !
Peach ice cream and scuppernong jelly , fig preserves and tomato gravy !
Columbus grits and Claxton fruitcake , Vidalia onion rings , Elijay apples !
In my next life I relish the very thought of becoming a Cardinal , turned loose in a muscadine arbor ! The most heart stopping  , meanest scarecrow ever made would be no match for a wise old crow in a watermelon patch ! Mockingbird busy in a old plum tree , a honeybee in a clover field as far as the eye can see !

There was a time
when I blocked my face
with two palms,
only to avoid seeing the world.
But the two palms can only block
the world in my eyes,
not the world in my heart.
The world in my heart
is always too big
to be blocked by the palms.
Especially when there is you in it.

You...
smiling and offering the love
that reminds me
to the most delicious
Korean persimmons
in Autumn season.

(Now I start to feel that without you,
Seoul is nothing but an empty city,
and the world is nothing but an empty place).

-Kanya Puspokusumo-
http://doeniadevi.wordpress.com

night falls again and
i’m racing against the clock and
for some reason, i’m losing.

quiet murmurs escape your lips and
the taste of persimmons and
strawberry lip balm linger.

dissipating slowly, your skin and
your voice and
your face.

I.
All through elementary school
blonde beautiful lip reading teachers
would try to correct my “th”s by snaking
their tongues between their teeth and
holding it there, ripe cherries
tempting me to bite into them.

This was the one thing my withdrawn self
throbbing with the first thrusts of male
enthusiasm couldn’t stop thinking about—
all those thin throats with patchouli scents
wildly, willingly, whispering interdental fricatives
like a throng of French kisses to my thirsty lips.
I thoroughly desired the apples of their necks—
to chew them, **** them, swallow them,
eat them all -all of them- all of it,
every one so meaty-sweet and
erupting with wet dreams.

They would undress themselves,
my harem besides me on the river bank,
their white stomachs dewy and shivering,
the ribbiting Croquis behind the marsh
chanting to me to instruct these chicas
in the ch’s— chas,  cha-chas, chochas
of the Puerto Rican mating call
with no use for this, that, these, thems,
just the rich vowels of legs parting
telling them each where
ella es hermosa como la luna.
(She is beautiful as the moon.)

Once Senorita Lujuria brought to class
a persimmon plucked from her garden
ripe with the musky  smell
of what the girls thought was chocha
and the boys imagined was ***
that she sliced into two equal suns.  

Knowing that it wasn’t ripe or sweet
I refused the first bite she offered.
I watched the  others spit it out,
their palms full of bitter disappointment.


II.
When I got home my mother was cutting
off the crown of a pomegranate, scooping
out the core without disturbing the berries,
scoring just through the outer rind, until
it quartered and could be gently pulled apart.
I stuck out my hand and she inverted the skin
until the berries fell warmly filling my palm
and then into a red plate

Her body was a bruise, especially her hands
I gently rolled her wheelchair
to her cluttered room
where she sang an old Spanish song
asking for the ghosts to take her away.
Her song swelled and she cried it out of her
heavy with sadness and sweet with love.

After she had passed I stumbled upon
three scrolls tied with purple velvet string
folded under a down blanket in the basement.

I unrolled three paintings done by my mother
in the Frida Kahlo style.
  
The first was a self- portrait of her holding
a quartered pomegranate in one hand,
a sliced persimmon in the other.
The second was of her staring out at the ocean,
her body bulging with the idea
of my joyous conception.
The last, was an ****** tableau
of her and Senorita Lujuria
in a forbidden embrace, signed and
dated two years before I was born.

The first two painting had the deftness
of a thousand skilled repetitions,
the taboo one sprawled with arthritic loops
but still hathe talent of muscle memory.
My eyes teared with the knowledge that
my mother never lost the things she loved,
her son, the colors, scents and textures
of all the persimmons and pomegranates
so neatly sliced and lustily devoured.

a wisp of smoke rises
from the ash and embers

and curls into
the cold morning air

a group of scrub jays
hop from stone-to-stone

around the fire ring
enjoying the lingering warmth

and satisfying their curiosity
about the noisy intruders

I lift my coffee mug
to my lips

and they disappear
into the junipers

and wild persimmons
their raspy calls

reminding me
that I am on their turf

Tom Spencer © 2018

The persimmons hung gorgeously orange
And red off bare limbs
Nature’s ornaments in December-
They dropped, divine and ripe
Juicy one by one
On to the soft leaf litter
Out of loving arms and all naked
grey skies.
This was my daily treat
Landscapes of color and
That tree at the creek corner road
Stunning in fog
As I obeyed the stop sign at least once
Or twice every day
In the darkest time-brightest joy
Illuminating the fumy and spirituous,
wet northern
California days..

If I might bite that luscious fruit
Stolen from someones tree
Rest in the cool bay rain
Slumber me
Rock me In that sweet,
Fresh petricor that bewitches
Your mind before it washes your ripe skin.

I was the wild mustard then.
Everywhere at once in winter
Corrupting ****** soaking earth
Thunderous yellow

Rising for an all too brief season
Mistaking you for the sun

We’re on Fall break this week and Peter’s favorite aunt - Lita - is visiting. Lita’s a tall, slim woman (eek! A guess), in her early sixties. She’s nicely weathered and tan. I’m sure she once had Peter’s blue-black hair but now it’s mostly white and styled in a loose braid. I think she rocks the coastal grandma aesthetic with a wardrobe of mostly pale tans, whites and flats.

Peter has all kinds of stories about her - she’s a character. When Peter was 5, on Halloween, Lita pretended to sacrifice a chicken, cackling, like a witch. He was wide-eyed until she admitted she was just making fried chicken for dinner.

Lita lives on property adjacent to Peter’s parents, but hers is larger, more of a farm, where she raises chickens and grows Meyer-lemons and persimmons. This may explain why Peter slices up lemons, dips them in sugar and eats them like oranges (I shiver). Peter told me that Lita always liked fruit, which is why she bought Apple stock in 1997.

From what I’ve learned, talking to Lita, she practically raised Peter’s dad (David). Their parents had a boy before her, an older brother she doesn’t remember meeting because he drowned at a church outing when she was a toddler. Their parents, in their grief, had turned in on themselves, becoming as self-centered as gyroscopes.

They’d left Lita by herself for weeks at a time, to raise herself on a more-or-less trial-and-error basis. So, when David came along 13 years later, he became her responsibility. She started working as an auto mechanic and eventually opened a couple of shops of her own. She describes herself as more well-read than formally educated - as if knowledge had just settled on her, like dust from an old library.

“Teressa (Peter’s mom) is very curious about you,” Lita confides to me as we huddle together over venti pumpkin lattes, “Peter’s very tight-lipped where you’re concerned.”
“He is?” I ask, confused, “maybe he’s ashamed,” I venture, “or maybe he’s planning to dump me?”  Lita looks amused, ”uh huh, that’s probably IT,” she agrees.
“Look! I say excitedly, pulling an envelope from my purse, “It’s my first-ever paycheck,” I beam. I make a production of opening the thing, like an Oscar envelope. “$223,” I read, shaking my head in admiration, then adding, with sincere sounding hyperbole, ”he can’t dump me NOW, I’m RICH!”

Contrails, like brushstrokes
made with measured and elegant
exactitude
wash over the halo of white light
worn by mother moon-
the persimmons of night cut through
the vaporous blanket of winter,
swaddling the earth below in mellow
reflected light,
saying "carry on, my sons
and my daughters,
the night shall pass,
but until then I give what comfort
I can."

Doppelgänger
by Michael R. Burch

Here the only anguish
is the bedraggled vetch lying strangled in weeds,
the customary sorrows of the wild persimmons,
the whispered complaints of the stately willow trees
disentangling their fine lank hair,

and what is past.

I find you here, one of many things lost,
that, if we do not recover, will undoubtedly vanish forever ...
now only this unfortunate stone,
this pale, disintegrate mass,
this destiny, this unexpected shiver,

this name we share.

Keywords/Tags: doppelganger, namesake, twin, lookalike, grave, tomb, headstone, inscription, weeds, shiver, recognition, destiny, fate

You let yourself unravel every word of each piece of your composition, willingly, beggingly. He raps his fingers down each crescent fall of your vertebra, and every time you look at him, hes a different expression of what you imagined loving, when you were little and brave. His eyes are the color that you saw one time, on acid, when you were fifteen, that you always told your friends about but even you didn't believe after a while. He can pierce you, with anything. With small kisses that float under your eye lids, with a handful of seaweed stuck between his teeth, with the sound of nothing leaving his porcelain lungs. You feel him in this world, you felt him before you knew him. You felt him in your city, you felt him at your door, you felt his electricity shut your mouth and slide down your throat and make love to all the stupid things you were going to say.
      You beckoned him, a long time ago. While other lovers taught you what to hate. When you wished into your stuffed bears, into the leaves in the gutter, into tiny shirt, into bags of wine, into the abyss of a muddy lagoon. In your prayers of becoming a witch, into your prayers of not dying today.
    When he first took your hand, did it almost fall off. Did you forget all the things you hated. Did you watch yourself run into a fairy colored sunset leveraged by all you've let go of. As you begin to tangle your bodies, you begin to remember him. From along time ago, in the snow or in the desert. One time when you and him were kings and queens of a time and a place no body cared no body cared about...
    He asks to speak to the young lady that breaks in you, he braids her hair in round plaited knots. He asks to speak to the child that cries in you, he washes her feet with mud and feeds her handfuls of persimmons.
    His mouth shapes around the curve of your tiny shoulders. He tastes the salt of the ocean from behind your ears. He mixes his hair with your until you imagine what your babies eyes will look like, He smells like the earth under a sweat lodge, like the mud soaked in a mans fight for freedom, fight for love..
     You hold his hand, as he holds you, and you begin to sway slowly, drunkenly into a tender cave that
      cast shadows of the reckless before, a floor covered in peddles of the most beautiful flowers that have ever been.

Our home is burning.
Moths and lilies are breaking the woodwork.
They are fluttering closer to our fumbling feet.
Your grandmother’s wallpaper has never looked so beautiful.

I used to spend my nights in the silence between the sofa cushions,
Trying to organize the history of anarchism,
Wondering why the persimmons had been bitter to us,
And why you could not distinguish stones from bread.

On the day God decided to forsake virgins,
I went off to the market, closing the door behind me softly.
Our foundation disappeared behind me.
Somewhere, I believe, you are still dancing.

I am tired of chasing straw haired boys,
Who smell like earth and stability and everything that should be good for me.

I hurl myself like a meteor at them,
crash headfirst and they insist I am more fire rocket than girl.

He picks a girl who looks like him,
And I insist it is not because I am not straw haired.

But it eats at me, persimmons drip just like strawberries.
Why did you pick me if you could never even love me?

Shining garland with engraved golden bells .. Blue , red and silver packages wrapped with great care ..
Shimmering pine cones and toy drums , green  , white and yellow ornaments , glowing stars and tinsel accouterments ...

A white snowy blanket at her base , round and square presents with beautiful bows and delicate lace ..
Persimmons and oranges , a bowl of assorted nuts , hot apple cider , candy canes and egg nog ...

Christmas music and shimmering lights , the sound of mourning doves outside our window on this special night ....
A glowing testament to love stands tall
May the joy of the holiday season follow you all year long !!

-Xenophon leads me on… in another place… here
Aft amorning entranct with possibilities. Yo crero.
Someday you, is reading thisday me, when
from Under the Volcano
to the Lighthouse, bemused, as muses use us. Little things, elves. Ves-try best try, purple robe,

- the nobels dismounted
By and by, we learn the rhythm, sing song, none
Said wrong -goin’ up country… doin’s as we do…
goin up country, bring some ***** home
Woe baby war war war, holy war, face o’ god,
- Click, new channel, and the other one goes on… abysmally pro fundity, pay eh…
No mortal may gaze into, as the window of his own soul,  may gaze eyes ablaze, having
Witnessed the fact that the shining thing, tasting
The wait and see tree, {we asked why we could not eat the olives from the tree, but remembert green persimmons. So we let patience work}
We name first fruits, from the end of time, wait
Wait wait wait wait wait
Fifty years. Just wait. Suffer it to be so, never go
-away hungery, or mad, as the author, seeks cause, aitia, reason come to cause,
meet me at the t. aitia, I am, as amusement, a thoth thought that any Solomonic emulation can run. Pocket Pal, or a B natural Blues Harp, or
Some times I sing. Or whistle, just to let me know,
We remain just this sane, by a thread…
Of Anabasis, goin’ up country
Bound, bound bound by my brothers,
Marching
As to war, God gives us greed, t’ meet our need
Jones to the bones, pure-dee vine curiosity
how were such armies formed, gathered up,
from where, whence came the brazen helms
the hoplites sport on inspection and demo charge,
with a roar like highschool foot ball kick-off,
same surge of mob adrenal reasoning, tuned in,
sheee it, we, she-us, wh-then, the signal dropped out. Zero beat.
Right on. Tune tested, best of 300, in the top 3.
- look there were multiple versions
- the story of mankind, as we branched,
by means of confoundment… flattening,
Tin into brass, folding, and flattening, pounding
On an oak stump, oh,
Long time ago, this stump, see we cut it down,
slow, slow, old man fades, see,
Time as thought is time as time, to me, thinking this is all I bloomed to become.
About 1957, I learned that an old Persian olive
cultivar on Crete, or anywhere around there,
takes fifty years to reach maturity, full fruct-
if-ication…

So me, the guy after the secondplace hero,
Xenophon, you know, the rich geek,
Teddy Roosevelt, right, right right, just
like his character,
Legendary… like mine. My best me, I did boast,
But freedmen, as a class. Raise a brow, one notch,
Per sold out, wait, wait, wait till we see, the whites of their eyes, the others, sub-human, by god… hold your fire… wait
Or regret you have but one life to give, for your country. Do and die, be an Israelite indeed, guiless.--- unbeguiled, no guilt for knowing…
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not… in deed…

High-brow mode. Click. Read the underlay,
life’s books, exist as onion-skinned palimpsests,
- Secret writing , not hid, just here, under
- Stood stones, such as we all learn, sing
- Song,  look at us, we’re marching, sing along… to Pretoria, pre- torie, eh, we
Dropped out. And ate dust. Dots in the distance,
Thunder in some dreams, tuned to take a non-anxious thought from a child so sure,
I’ve got a mansion,
just over the hilltop, in that bright land of after all.
We die. And lo’, we live, as words,
A word, to the wise, is enough… true rest compresses trust abused as a beggars tin-cup, to catch the rich man’s ball…
yes, I owned a silver cup… not tin, silver.
I was as proud of that cup as what’shisname,
The Left-handed Son of One-eyed Jack.
He had a buffalo hide. A whole, shaggy hair,
old, too old for fleas, buffalo hide,
he held in pride, the ownership
of special things kind of pride, not the gay abandon chains and don a Phryigian cap and
wrap the headsman’s axe in our threshing staves.
How high the brow, I raise, singlely, no, I lack that gene, yet, my lip doth sneer, left side only,
Thus, we flip the lense, then flip the pixels, yes,
Film effects, chaos in beauteous sfumato or chiaroscuro, something computers were taught,
finally, by sight. True, half-tone tech, made Chiaroscuro Computer Art, vision via metrics based on artist’s eyes, won me first prize,
An the 1986 Mohave County Fair, where we
Displayed our wares, and our networked Macs.
SE- latest, dual 3,5” floppies…
$3200, out the door. I never sold a one,
but to me. Wholesale, minus my commission, as the flooring was running out, interest
about to come for the accounting and the vig,
Keep hope alive, pay us all you can, we say when,
Enough’s enough, left right left, mental exercise,
Stretch the concepts… essentials first, must know
Knowns, we knowns, we all know, stories with morals, since the cradle,
So it seems, some think wombed Bach is better than acid rock,
time will tell, so they say. Vonnegut mutters,
So it goes.
Canned Heat, on youtube, at my whim, yeah,
Play it from the second verse, we all can think,
We were singing that, when Kurt Russell was a computer wearing tennis shoes, in a strange
Disney characters from the real Mickey Mouse club, with Lonnie, and Cubbie, and Annette –
Beach Blanket Bingo—war story
Flip for it, the novel thread is chance, fishing
For mental means to ends in minds, aimed at peace, post happiness achieved, on the Lincoln plan promoted with Famous Amos Chocolate Chips of the old block,
Yes, as you may imagine, carbon-steel, is new
To mankind, almost all the tools we use, are new.
Since 1969, have we learned any thing that might ease a child’s mind… after My Lai, or the like,
As soldier ants, enforce the others must die, we are protectors of the flag and the concept enclosed in the word republic, a we form, regimented,
Tools,
Trades and crafts,
Guardians of liberty,
Priests and experts in knowing signs
Left on stones for all to see, see, see and
So-bemused become, awe sets in, couch lock
Right, too right, mate, good enough, we got mind
Sunk… lowest point in south America is in Argentina. And what do you know, so is the highest. Learn it once,
Know it for ever, after any ever in progress.

Wearing nothing but a blanket,
  wrapped loosely 'round my hips,
There's a swelter and a swagger,
  when I sweep the floor with it,
As I wander through the kitchen,
  to the window facing east.
Where the last of wilting jasmine,
  tries desperately to cling.
To the cool and most reviving shade,
  of the persimmons tree.

I watch after your mother.
between dizzy-spells and cups of tea,
I read to her the latest styles,
from fashion magazines.
Her mind is a riddle,
  and ridden with dementia
She asks, "What's in the box?",
though there doesn't seem to be one.
I suspect she means the tissue,
and I tell her that it is.
Then she gives me a great smile,
just like a little kid.

I spent the day in idleness,
I could think of nothing better,
Than to do exactly what I'm doing,
Waning in this shelter.
I lay in bed on the side
where you sleep facing me.
I smelled your smell,
to decipher it.
Masculine yet sweet.
I'm feeling like a treasure chest,
I don't have a use.
Until you want to open me,
to steal my gold doubloons.

Friday evenings
Pizza and chicken wings
Or other conveniences
Cooking would be silly
Persimmons—
This week's special
Beer or red wine, occasionally
Perhaps
Only reading has never
being changed on the menu
No matter what I've chosen
I think a book is still the best food
For a weekend's picking  
Unless I'm starving

Hear the chimes ringing,
this sleepy Sunday singing.
Monday will bring persimmons,
and Tuesday a touch of snow.
Eyelids grow heavy,
the evening siestas are winning.
The trees shade are giving
and sweet scents are brimming
among these lovely Sunday trimmings.

Oh, what a fine Spring day.

ROBIN REDBREAST

It was the dingiest bird
you ever saw, all the color
washed from him, as if
he had been standing in the rain,
friendless and stiff and cold,
since Eden went wrong.
In the house marked FOR SALE,
where nobody made a sound,
in the room where I lived
with an empty page, I had heard
the squawking of the jays
under the wild persimmons
tormenting him.
So I scooped him up
after they knocked him down,
in league with that ounce of heart
pounding in my palm,
that dumb beak gaping.
Poor thing! Poor foolish life!
without sense enough to stop
running in desperate circles,
needing my lucky help
to toss him back into his element.
But when I held him high,
fear clutched my hand,
for through the hole in his head,
cut whistle-clean . .
through the old dried wound
where the hunter's brand
had tunneled out his wits
I caught the cold flash of the blue
Unappeasable sky.