The Fig Tree in Lourmarin

Out for one of my walks before the heat returned,

I remember meeting this fig tree.

What I can’t remember now is whether the meeting occurred

Before or after my marriage failed.

I know I was crying in the fire of August

And looking for a fig tree the grave keeper told me

Was so abundant it could chutney an army.

And I did find it beyond the cemetery,

This lone tree

With limbs spreading wide and low,

Dressed in the ruin of summer,

The ground of its standing littered with rotting husks.

I pulled apart the branches, ducked inside a sticky cavity,

And picked a purple fig.

Not one wrapped in ham, chevre and dipped in honey,

Not one sautéed in butter and spread on bruschetta

And dribbled with balsamic 

And sold on the corner where the Algerian lived,

But a naked one

With its head in the sun and its feet in water,

And I held the flesh of its long unstoppable life in my mouth

And rolled its crunchy seeds on my tongue.

In the beginning was the word, 

The moist, luscious, solitary word, and the word was fig.

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J.P. White has published essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry in over a hundred-fifty publications. Read more.


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