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.