Some think it’s in our best interest
to prune fruit trees of watersprouts and sideshoots,
thinning the canopy to let in light and increase
the apple crop, but I believe the right course
is to follow the northern wind to its own conclusion
down a worn deer run where like an old white-tail buck
we stop to savor what ripens before the frost
consumes it all. And be thankful for the time
we had to wander the abandoned orchard,
bed down in the shade-cooled grass, relaxed
and unfettered from any human task
the world, fortunately, never imagined for us.
Sounds inedible, but my son, home for a visit, makes it
for his mother and me who sit at the table pretending
eagerness, but still devoted to him, ready to try
a roll he fashioned with his own hands,
hands which at 27 possess little resemblance
to the ones that gripped my fingers those first months
of his life when all that kept him from harm
were my hands and his mother’s, and our fear
we’d screw this all up, his life, his future,
the hopes we had for our family, all of it rolled up
in those small fists opening and reaching for us.
Now there are callouses on his palms, scars where knife
or guitar string sliced, evidence of a life
I know less and less about each year.
He joins us at the table, selects a piece,
lightly sprinkles Bonita flakes, then passes it to me.
It’s such a simple dish, the salty meat,
the rice he washed and steamed, the deep umami
from soy and mirin he added just for us,
which somehow takes me to my mother’s kitchen
where she’s frying spam because she can’t afford
beef or chicken, the crispy slices placed on white bread
slathered with mustard for our lunch. And tonight
my son prepares his version with its own history
of struggle. I lift it to my mouth, this offering
of love and remembrance. I take a bite.
Rick Mulkey is the author of All These Hungers, Ravenous: New & Selected Poems, Toward Any Darkness, Bluefield Breakdown, and Before the Age of Reason, and with Denise Duhamel he has edited the anthology Ice On a Hot Stove: A Decade of Converse MFA Poetry. Previous work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, The Literary Review, Poetry East, and Still: The Journal. He currently lives and works in Spartanburg, South Carolina.