The One-Year-Old Lemon Tree

Its small celestial reach stops where the counterweight, the first tough green fruit, pulls earthward and returns the brazen, almost rank perfume of blossoms now six months gone. The slurred odor of its leaves calls back that long evening’s end: we shivered in the cool light a northerly sun bent against the world into the hands of friends who helped clear the outdoor supper’s sharp debris—forks, tin plates, balled napkins and bone nests. The lemon blossoms throbbed. The air slowed with so much young life, the fragrance quickened in our veins the common, too surprising wish to hold, just then, another, whoever stood nearest, whatever charm would bind us to the lowering light. Then someone said, “Let’s eat the tree”— Tear apart the bole, raid the green heart, devour remembrance with one moment’s hunger and eat the nature of things. Scraped plates, laughter, glasses refilled . . . Our sweet anger urged and gathered us around the young tree’s tub, made us tamp the wet soil and drink fast the clear smell of unseen yellow fruit in time we ourselves might never know.