It must be a good year, somewhere,
for cherries. In a blue bowl on the table
they are turning from red to black
as the light goes, each stem tipped
with a minute fist clenching the air.
They keep coming—on every corner fruit cart
in New York City, every Korean
deli, all the bodegas and gourmet
stores—everyone has them to overflowing
this summer, these Grade A cherries that gleam
like newels and crack like cane, firm as beef
between your teeth. Impossible to know
who grew them, in what country down south where people
pick them by hand, one by one, too precious to taste.