For today’ poem, I offer a stunner by P. Scott Cunningham from the Summer 2023 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review.
My Heart, A.K.A. the Mango Tree Hanging Over the I-95 Retaining Wall at NW 65th St.
Miami, FL
The job of the wall is to keep
the noise of the traffic from reaching the houses
on the other side, while the job of the tree is to grow
over the wall, stretching to eat the morning sun
it uses to manufacture the fruit that hangs,
for three weeks in June, like disobeyed traffic lights
changing slowly from the color of night
to a shade of noon.
No one ever picks these mangos
but the tree keeps on making them. It doesn’t
need a beneficiary to give a blessing, dropping
them without warning onto the asphalt
where they break and bleed out their juice
into a permanent shadow, the highway
like a piece of paper onto which
the tree draws a picture of itself.