Avocado

When I first heard avocado trees take eight

years to bear I reckoned I’d be sixty-plus if

I planted one right now a daunting notion

meantime a volunteer tree between our place

and the barn kept growing we puzzled

over its identity the first few years then knew

it to be an avocado maybe a seed started

by a child using a glass with toothpicks holding

aloft the fruit’s center thrown aside the long

root tailing into tap water while two dark

green leaves reached out of the crack long

before we arrived then say four years ago

flowers showed on what had become a shade

tree we’d pruned and shaped agreed to leave

in that corner thus when the first fruit arrived

delighted we opened it up but its watery

bitterness put us off too bad we said not

the good kind and now I’m sixty two lived

here nine full years resigned to another

decade before we’ll find the right variety

though this one bears so much our children

now grown bringing their children two born

this year and a third two years ago

walking between here and the barn over

numbers of fallen avocadoes opening them

up they tell us you have delicious avocadoes

you know and so we do we’re told they’re “goldens”

so many we have to give them away like

everything that comes like a gift without

waiting just as our life here started green

and promising while we planted not knowing

how time would keep us guessing before flowering

before setting the fruit down before us