Poem of the Week: Ross Gay

To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian

Tumbling through the

city in my

mind without once

looking up 

the racket in

the lugwork probably

rehearsing some

stupid thing I

said or did

some crime or

other the city they

say is a lonely

place until yes

the sound of sweeping

and a woman

yes with a 

broom beneath

which you are now

too the canopy

of a fig its 

arms pulling the

September sun to it

and she

has a hose too

and so works hard

rinsing and scrubbing

the walk

lest some poor sod

slip on the 

silk of a fig

and break his hip

and not probably

reach over to gobble up

the perpetrator 

the light catches

the veins in her hands 

when I ask about 

the tree they 

flutter in the air and

she says take

as much as

you can 

help me

so I load my 

pockets and mouth

and she points

to the step-ladder against 

the wall to

mean more but

I was without a 

sack so my meager

plunder would have to 

suffice and an old woman

whom gravity

was pulling into

the earth loosed one

from a low slung 

branch and its eye

wept like hers

which she dabbed

with a kerchief as she

cleaved the fig with

what remained of her

teeth and soon there were

eight or nine 

people gathered beneath

the tree looking into

it like a 

constellation pointing

do you see it

and I am tall and so

good for these things

and a bald man even 

told me so 

when I grabbed three

or four for 

him reaching into the 

giddy throngs of

yellow-jackets sugar 

stoned which he only

pointed to smiling and

rubbing his stomach

I mean he was really rubbing his stomach

like there was a baby 

in there

it was hot his

head shone while he 

offered recipes to the 

group using words which 

I couldn’t understand and besides

I was a little

tipsy on the dance

of the velvety heart rolling

in my mouth

pulling me down and

down into the

oldest countries of my 

body where I ate my first fig

from the hand of a man who escaped his country

by swimming through the night 

and maybe

never said more than

five words to me

at once but gave me

figs and a man on his way

to work hops twice

to reach at last his

fig which he smiles at and calls 

baby, c’mere baby,

he says and blows a kiss

to the tree which everyone knows

cannot grow this far north

being Mediterranean

and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils

of Jordan and Sicily

but no one told the fig tree

or the immigrants

there is a way

the fig tree grows

in groves it wants,

it seems, to hold us,

yes I am anthropomorphizing

goddammit I have twice

in the last thirty seconds

rubbed my sweaty 

forearm into someone else’s

sweaty shoulder

gleeful eating out of each other’s hands

on Christian St.

in Philadelphia a city like most

which has murdered its own 

people 

this is true

we are feeding each other 

from a tree

at the corner of Christian and 9th

strangers maybe 

never again.

From American Poetry Review, May/June 2013.

Used by permission

Ross Gay is a gardener and teacher living in Bloomington, Indiana.  This poem is from his forthcoming book, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015).

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.