Ficus carica
By Damien Becker
~Ficus carica~
takes the back corner
shoulders resting on two fences
haunches shading chickens dust-laid
lazy from the hobby farmer’s failing zeal,
delivering (not quite black) figs to grateful
lorikeets, bush rats, night-eyed possums,
a trap of ancient air under curtained arms,
this dank oppression of insect spider-wire
highways suspended from sap-stuck limbs,
abandoned cicada husks, a scatter of ducklings
darting from beneath their mother’s
downy fort,
studied by
watchful
ravens, safe until-
This poem is a public submission created for Red Room Poetry's New Shoots digital poetry anthology.