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  • My Fig Tree
  • David Black (bio)

Too tender for my climate, it seems, though Jim,just a few miles away, grows them quite well.I have planted mine on the sunny south side

of the house, the warmest spot I can find,the most protected from the lethal winds.Still, it has winter-killed for three years now,

dying back to the roots and forcing meto cut it to ground level. I watch itslowly grow to full height before it fruits—

fruiting so late the figs which do emergecannot ripen before the heavy frostsof autumn kill all except three or four.

But it persists, and I persist, hopingthe weather gods give this tree softer daysand gentle nights, clement winds from the north—

just one good season of bloom, growth, and birth.We are stubborn, we two, and we'll persist,till one of us goes underground and stays. [End Page 94]

David Black

David Black's work has appeared in Now & Then, Zone 3, Tar River Poetry, and Appalachian Journal. He is the former poetry editor of English Journal and has published four poetry collections: Some Task, Long Forgotten and Other Poems (2000, reprinted 2017), The Clown in the Tent (2010), Shortcomings: Around the Grounds and Corner (2017), and Aspects of a Crosscut Saw (2017).

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