You are pure fire, expansive light. To sculpt, to
create art, you have to remove extraneous material, leave some marble
or wood behind to bring forth a jewel, but nothing should be extracted
from you. You are as complete as a seven-colored rainbow.

Suppose God left you in a forest with peridot
trees, mountains of ochre rock, gold veins running through the rivers.
Suppose God asked you to create something from those elements that
would honor nature. How could you? Paradise doesn’t need art. I
can’t describe the man who is beyond a flower. No thorns, no dirty
root, not even petals with their brief vitality, only perfume
spreading over the plain. On this day, I send you searching through
the garden for the flower that I cannot narrate, but must conjure.
Imagine such a flower. Imagine your grace.

—from a letter to Murphy

* * *

“Oh Heavenly Father

looking up from roses and birds on the sixth day

to make every soul deliberate, every tint perfect,

God,

certainly I should have come to earth.

I am not a martian the color of celadon seared to ash by the love of a none-too-prudent sun.

I come from the dust of Adam, too,

the rib that is Eve,

I am your child, too, God,

certainly!” I imagine you prayed.

“God, there are only two plants recognized in this world:

dark balsa, light hibiscus wood,

and in their branches are the letters, the maths,

and even your sacred words.

God, not in a garden under the gaze of a cherub,

but in a marshland scented like gumbo,

school and church are forbidden

to your Creole children—

black in blood, white in appearance,

vandalized of heart.

And I know that I live in a town of Creoles

who run out their night-hued siblings,

but God, I did not make the town, nor the school, nor myself, nor the world.

Maker, render me safe.”

* * *

“God,

there is nothing like the incontinence of tragedy:

the horses of autumn and spring fleeing,

dragging their bullion, russet, lilac, bronze, blush,

(future in fear of the sadness)

and the sulphorous flaming ghost of what might have been

raising its one tattered wing in the night.

So life removes its brassiere

and drains all of its milk to the soil

with neither pity

nor restraint.

God,

Daedalus is author of Icarus’s fall

and Noah curses Ham and all his kids.

My father is crippled,

so I lose the letters and geometry of life.

At twelve years old I am condemned to the fields

and poisoned by canes of sugar.”

* * *

You converted brown sugar into lone star dreams,

took your youth from the fields and cradled it in your hands,

and carried it across the southern border from Louisiana to Texas,

spun it among the wheels of a delivery boy’s bicycle and flew.

Spirit of fruit (lovers of the sun,

globes the colors of various roses

knitted with assorted medicines and strengths,

lore, aphrodisiacs),

you, the guardian of fruit, I address,

delivery boy not yet a patriarch

too smart to be the courier of bulbs,

sent to New Mexico to reign over cantaloupe operations

and discover the magic of Spanish.

French, Creole, Latin, English, Spanish,

patron of fruits and tongues,

splendor the hue of rose beryl,

with eyes of celestite.

Brother to fauna,

summers pass and orchards grow heavy a dozen times,

now you own the fruit you sell,

superb entrepreneur,

and eggs (the magic of beginning!),

and vegetables (the fortitude of men).

Mythic man,

those who work for you later take the Hippocratic Oath

inspired by your light.

Mythic man,

how do you re-cook your client’s once-cooked Cajun turkey

un-cooking the original cursed cookery?

Mythic man,

so wise

Ph.D.s treasure your advice.

Mythic man,

the spiciest crawfish and the most luscious boudin,

superlative delights you sell in your store,

and under your eyes there is no shame in a client’s food stamp.

Mythic man,

friend to each client,

saint on earth.

Spirit of fruit,

man possessed by the sweetness of life.

* * *

Boys can carry his name throughout millennia,

yet Ann is the sacred child.

More the daughter of Terpsichore than Rose,

your wife,

she sings and dances all her waking hours.

Your reflections mingle in the lake water of Conroe

no definite place where daughter ends and daddy begins,

yet at fourteen she manages to loosen herself from the brambles

and leave behind the fruits of the earth.

Her sickle cells doom her to a journey

past the lake’s playful blue,

more like shadows-dropped-in-the-catharsis blue,

blue like a glowing mirror,

like a hymn sung in the sea catching on to the first veins of sunlight

leading home.

* * *

Spirit of fruit,

after diverging from your thorny Rose,

you interlock your limbs with my grandmother, Dear.

You re-christen her Cookie,

to make her your own

and your world is the span of her heart.

Spirit of fruit,

to love again,

to inherit two daughters from your new queen

and a baby on the way.

Yes, I am coming to be born

to chart the courses and mark out the xylans,

to record forever the horticulture,

regarding the Spirit of fruit.

* * *

Here is the thing that I must know,

Spirit of Fruit,

student of life, nourishment, sugar,

what is the plant that grows inside of you making you so kind?

You weep, as Joan of Arc Wept, as warriors weep,

but not for the loss of an empire or a lack of world to conquer,

but because for you the world is torn if you see one person suffer.

Grandfather, woven from compassion, splendid beyond belief

teach me where to scratch the earth,

where to furrow, where to till,

teach me where I might find the seeds,

to grow your heart in me too.