Here, mist spits our shoulders sweaty as we trudge
the hill toward the house. Wet grocery bags slide down
forearms and we swing-bag across the chicken-shit tracks,
toward bees lapping at honeysuckles twisted between chain-link,
bound so tight to metal you can’t thumb what’s left of pink honey
loose. I want to know the urgency of loving a place hard enough
to accept my return to it, like how the crows always doddle back
toward the flesh they want, bellying up to old raccoon meat
in the curb’s crook, sucking on it, satisfied. Here, you could say,
let’s stay, let’s linger for a while, like the slant-side of the road
that dissolves into yellow grass and gravel, but even it hurries us
to the other side, forces a rush over the road, and delivers sidewalk.
Here, we dodge the patch kinked in the tracks, rogue spoke-teeth
needling for rubber, where, between the metal gaps of the track,
flies churn beside our ankles in search of that distant souring clump.
Near, the suspect tree bends to the street, green limbs pray, there
in the lot where the old slat-house was demolished after the crime.
In the distance, our gray house pales in front of a pulped sun,
and we stop at the tree to pluck it, to fill our bags with figs,
delighted in the heaviness of free fruit—and eventually,
we’ll reach home, cut them open, and find bugs inside.