Poetry / Persimmon Tree
I was chosen
to be the bearer of incredible amounts
of sadness,
of fruit swelling
with the bittersweet.
In the backyard garden
my father tends to his trees—
lemon, orange, apple, peach,
persimmon.
“Feed the trees sugar,
and they will bear sweet fruit,”
he says.
All I remember from childhood are
those Sunday afternoons
resting my head on my mother’s lap after church,
her hands cool like autumn;
those days on the beach,
worrying whether I could build the moat in time
to save my dream castle
from the next wave—
“But they will be weaker,”
he warns.
“The trick is to help trees grow strong
and bear sweet fruit
on their own.”
It wasn’t worth remembering,
how much we didn’t have.
The bags of hand-me-downs,
coins filling up a washed-out jam-jar
to be used for Christmas presents.
We sneered at the rich kids,
my sister and I,
not out of jealousy, but out of righteous indignation
that they were spoiled.
“What you don’t have
only makes you stronger,”
we said.
“You must prune the trees
so that they take shape
and grow broader branches,”
he says.
I was a firm believer in love songs,
those mantras that said love
could only be tested,
could grow stronger only
through loss.
My father had a softness
for the persimmon tree,
trees that reminded him
of Korea, his youth,
his mother,
but he could never get them to grow
in the salt and cold of the coast.
That I could will love
through longing.
Summer solstices
and high noon
meant that the shadows could only get longer,
reach out and pull back,
reach out and pull back,
gain courage over time—
but I was chosen
to be the bearer of incredible amounts
of sadness,
of fruit swelling
with the bittersweet.
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I thought there was good imagery here and an interesting story. There seems to be a lack of transitions between the stanzas. I suggest switching some stanzas around in this order: One, two, four, five, three. Then six, eight, seven, nine, 10. This would make it easier to follow what I think you are trying to say.
Stanza nine was a bit obscure to me; maybe I just didn’t get it.
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