Eating the Fruit

The removal of your love (a plant uprooted)

has not changed the bloom on the grapes’ skins;

the assertion of the mango cubes, an aroused orange;

the white plate flawless, its oval holding

nothing but two perfect grains of blond sugar.

Wherever your love has gone, the fruit here

continues sweet, and the coffee too,

as sweet and as hot as we need it,

for the sun has covered itself with clouds.

It ripened the pineapples, the strawberries

in the field, the grapes, the honeydew, then

saw the harvesters at hand and retreated.

So the light on the last piece of mango

is a greyed, a diluted light. I take the last bite,

the white bowl holding just a rime of syrup.

Then the plate, the bowl, the proportional fork

laid across it. The meal a perfection of emptiness.