Pawpaw Elegy

by TODD DAVIS

Ointment for a troubled dream, feast to fill an ache, and so the bear
crooks a small tree to the earth, arm bent like a shepherd’s hook, feet
treading branches, improvised hay rake to comb the oblong fruits

into tall grasses that grow along the oxbowed river. A boy will learn
that a stream, as it ages, changes direction as it pleases, drowning those
we love in spring floods. The fruit smashes, yellow custard squeezed

between leaves, a skin Ursus licks and teethes, wresting pleasure
from the sunlight trapped within. The boy watches from beneath
a cluster of witch hazel. His father, at dinner each night, said

The feast is everywhere! But since his death, the food on the plate
congeals like a limp tongue, unable to taste anything but grief.
Everything the bear eats builds along its rump, shaped into fat,

weaving a blanket of flesh before there’s nothing left and winter
drapes him in sleep. The pawpaw’s bean-shaped seeds slide
down the gullet, and the squeaky wheel of a goldfinch call

falls and begs joy from air. The boy’s mother has asked him to pick
the fruit for the pudding she’ll curd, the loaf she’ll bake, adding
spiceberries and black walnuts to brighten the taste. The oven smells

like memory. In woods he’s known since birth, he turns blankly
and wonders where home is, stares at tree trunks and repeats
their names as his father taught him. Still the shovel scrapes

sour mud from the coffin, and he weeps over the carelessness
of water. On the river path the bear acts as farmer: seed-filled
turds crushed and oozing with muck, newly planted orchard

to feed fox and woodchuck. In the boy’s palm the darkened green
of a pawpaw wobbles. His father would have cut a cross
with his Barlow knife to test the color. He tears a patch

of the fruit’s roughened skin, wiggles fingers in the breadbasket,
bringing the doughy center to lips, a father’s kiss, a groan
of grieving delight.