My Father’s Tootal Ties

My father’s Tootal ties

slip from the rack

when I open the cupboard.

Unworn for decades,

they’re as good as new.

He was a fashionable man.

Back of the house

is a pomegranate tree.

In driest summer—when the only

thing to thrive is the marijuana plant

which in any case grows wild

in the valley—the pomegranate

puts forth at the end of a slender branch

two testicular fruit, the first

of the season. They fall before

they ripen, their thin skins bitten away

by squirrels, their pinkish interior

anatomical to look at.

I hear bird sounds everywhere,

hooraying and cheering from

window ledge, water tank, and scrub

as the year’s longest day passes

as quickly as the shortest.