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Switches, Pop, And Persimmon Rockets

I remember, well, that tall old persimmon
That stood in the yard, when I was a lad
The soft fruit that fell from that tall old persimmon
When picked up and eaten, what sweetness, it had

It didn’t take long to eat up all the ripe ones
And then what was left laying under the tree
Was firm, shiny fruit that resembled green apples
And it seemed it should also be tasty, to me

I picked up a big one and brushed off the dirt
Then sunk my teeth in its flesh, firm and green
My mouth puckered up like a prune in the sun
I found that persimmons aren’t tasty when green

My brothers and I and the neighbors as well
Would play in its shade most all the day long
Softball or horseshoes or cowboys and Indians
It didn’t much matter ‘cause life was a song

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poem by C.R. Clark
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autumn cheer
children rock tree
for last persimmon

haiku by John Tiong Chunghoo
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This old village

This old village-
not a single house
without persimmon trees.

poem by Matsuo Basho
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This old village

This old village--
not a single house
without persimmon trees.

Translated by Robert Hass

poem by Matsuo Basho
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Tree Frog

The tree frog
sits
on a green leafy branch
and stares at me with bright orange persimmon eyes
and a goofy expression that says,
“I’m a tree frog, what did you expect? ”

His yellow gumby-like legs
and bulbous sticky fingers
are poised and
ready to jump
straight out of the calendar
and onto my keyboard.

Ah, the things that go through your head
when divining for inspiration.

(Previously published in Creative Voice, Feb.2000)

poem by Laurence Overmire
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Violet

drowned in a pool of violet
the windows pour forth invisible echos
the leaking panes - my decrepit house-
leaking against a flooding ocean.
the fluids mix one in another
the colour is no more diluted.
still violet.
it remains outside
holding the house together -
tape on a house of cards
it does little good to pursue
orange, persimmon or other hues;
for blind are the lanterns
that guide those with-out
soon the lanterns'll drown too,
in a pool of violet hue.

poem by Crystal Korzinsky Chambers
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In The Parking Lot

Another viewing's slowness: it looks as if the dead
Are on television,
And she is waking up, dressing in fireworks that will
Persimmon off her body in a two for one sale—
From the heavenly depths of
Miami—
She will look up into a sea of airplanes—and spin outside of
The tent,
And next to the trucks and the supermarkets and
The fast food chains:
And all of that traffic—long fuse rapping around her
For a moment she is delighted—object of holidays—
Red and brown queen as amble as a deer wearing silver
Sparklers—
A spectacle in the parking lot at the end of the day.

poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Time And The Garden

The spring has darkened with activity.
The future gathers in vine, bush, and tree:
Persimmon, walnut, loquat, fig, and grape,
Degrees and kinds of color, taste, and shape.
These will advance in their due series, space
The season like a tranquil dwelling-place.
And yet excitement swells me, vein by vein:
I long to crowd the little garden, gain
Its sweetness in my hand and crush it small
And taste it in a moment, time and all!
These trees, whose slow growth measures off my years,
I would expand to greatness. No one hears,
And I am still retarded in duress!
And this is like that other restlessness
To seize the greatness not yet fairly earned,
One which the tougher poets have discerned—
Gascoigne, Ben Jonson, Greville, Raleigh, Donne,
Poets who wrote great poems, one by one,
And spaced by many years, each line an act
Through which few labor, which no men retract.

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poem by Yvor Winters
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Kiwi

Fruit without a stone, its shiny
pulp is clear green. Inside, tiny
black microdot seeds. Skin
the color of khakiImagine
a shaggy brown-green pelt
that feels like felt.
It's oval, full-rounded, kind
of egg-shaped. The rind
comes off in strips
when peeled with the lips.
If ripe, full of juice,
melon-sweet, yet tart as goose-
berry almost. A translucent ring
of seed dots looks something
like a coin-slice of banana. Grown
in the tropics, some stone
fruits, overlarge, are queerly
formed. A slablike pit nearly
fills the mango. I
scrape the fibrous pulp off with my

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poem by May Swenson
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Like the Japanese

Make for me inside an insouciance with your wonder,
And I will build for you with my muscles,
And these things I say which are steam engines,
And organic turbines; Do not let your eyes become instead
The blunders of the richly accessorized middle-classes,
Do not say those things which are readily understood and
Manageable, but instead ride with me to Mars,
This sort of amusement park made out of fire-axes and
Other pigments given to indigenous holidays. That is what I
Said: Make this life into an aqueduct, a prevalence of my
Scars hung with tinsel, your lips blowing the sawdust of such
Carpentry, your nails newly painted black and draped against
My cheek like the human brand of peacock; Or come with
Me to my grandmother’s grave and let us worship there like
The Japanese, let us spread origami like our bodies, into new
Shapes for Christmas, and let us not mind the way the snowflakes
Drift indefinably unique like little Chalets floating through a
Francophone space, or let us ride away from this back through
The vanished sea the mountains attend, as carefully as explorers
Approaching the epileptic fissures through the persimmon trees.

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poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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