At first it seems truly foreign, like the downy brown nutsack
in a health class textbook: almost too firm, almost too perfect
to be edible. If it gives to the touch, it’s ready to pluck.
No robin’s egg, though you might nestle it in your hands.
A few more boys deployed this week. Under jade green vines
they crawl on their crusty elbows, helmets tipped, their
backsides up. And they all went to bliss in their little skiff.
You may never understand the intersection of small & large,
conquest & defeat. For now, miraculous surges simply come,
a series of peaks which are not quite the purple monkshood,
not quite the crusty, papillated surface inside an alien geode.
Consider this odd yield: overgrown berry with its easy sway
and pubescent peel, how it will proffer its redolent fruit.
This mysterious being now enters you: to arms, to arms.