Tuesday, May the 1st, 2018

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Lupe Node

Lupe Node, the carrier, O is he dead then? My fruit-bowl all emptied. He carried my fruit, Lupe Node, in his manly muscular hands, plums in punnets and hawberries in hopkins. The sun battered him, as he sashayed from orchard to pier, to my kiosk, this man o' fruit, Jesuitical in his furrow-browed beanstalk bitterness. A man of few words, and those the names of fruits, names he made up, embroidered, spat out like plum-stones, chewed like nettles, O Lupe Node, forsaken by a God whose mercurial recklessness—those divine spasms!—came twitching in rags and schmutter. Pips haunted him, Lupe Node, lodged in his pocket-crannies, scattered in his locks, curly black and slathered in lac. Do not taunt him now, in his grave, on his uppers, worm-lunch, bird-roost. They named a pond for him. No fish thrive inwith it. And yet in memory of Lupe Node I take my paper bag of baggings there each March morning sodden by rain and stamped by yearning. Crumbs fall. Necks sag. Galoshes splosh.