Throwing Fruit

We all dwell in a house of one room,the world with the firmament for its roof . . .

–John Muir

I throw my old, uneaten fruit into the field next door.It's childish, I know.I could add them to the compost,or cut out their wounds and put them in a pie.But I have a pretty good arm, accurate and strong,and the leprous, godforsaken Fujis fly so farand the intoxicated tangerines almost always clear the field entirely,hitting the walls of the low, ugly housesomeone else assembled in a hurrybecause they had an adequate arm for nailing and sawingand a fake green thumb for quick investing.

No one lives in the house now—built from the mealy bones of the bank,another box of dust, a mausoleum of linoleum and drywall,unimaginatively ecru and stupid in its inability to open up.

The tightly pleated curtains never get to billow.The door, a steely fascist, never cracks or bangs, never, ever blows wide enoughto let in even one airy note of one breezy chord,or a tiny concerto of pennies and matches jangling in a draweror bread and jam on the countertop.

When I buy more fruit, I mention this to the produce man,he grins, but it's that primeval grin rooted in a seed before it bursts,in a wave in a tree in a volcano.Oh you lazy animists how did you let it come to this?

He takes me back to the storeroom,arms me with dozens of the soft black boomerangs of decaying bananasand bushels of heavy lemon cannon fodder.

I take my artillery to the middle of the fieldand for hours hurl the brilliant, fleshy bombsat the stoically splattered roof,at the windows shuddering their acquiescence,at the drainpipe shedding a little tear,until the whole idiotic structure is covered by the detonated insanity of fruit;the luscious tenacity of seeds seeking every possible wayto spread their curvy doctrine of sweet tendril and sprout.

In the morning the blue jays swoop down on the houseas if it's a 1,600-square-foot plate of sugar.The passionate bees build their juicy temples under the last drooping eave.

Now the hateful politics of the door are busted down.Now the wind will breathe its wild ballad, its lyrics of water and lightinto every mouth and limb opening green across the field.