Cutting Back the Fig

Wrath-singed, my father’s teeth set
to say what he would say
with brash, crackling faith

if he could just remember it:
like a creed,
a cradle song,
lulling death

as he remembers:
the breezeless evening steps, the fig overhanging, its leaves
growing into the path to slap him
with their light, sticky hairs

until he cuts them:
the strewn branches full of fruit tinged with ripening
and then she approaches, seeing
his arms still lifting the nippers

and he watches:
how she turned, back straight beneath
her two gray braids wound into knots
low at the nape behind her ears

the seething flees his muscles, the weak snap
of the final branch sickens,
and he says nothing, waving away
memory’s brittle lick on the neck,
brushing aside the weightless slap
of what’s forty years gone.