My Father and the Fig Tree

For other fruits, my father was indifferent. 

He'd point at the cherry trees and say, 

"See those? I wish they were figs."
In the evening he sat by my beds 

weaving folktales like vivid little scarves. 

They always involved a fig tree.
Even when it didn't fit, he'd stick it in.
Once Joha was walking down the road
and he saw a fig tree.
Or, he tied his camel to a fig tree and went to sleep. 

Or, later when they caught and arrested him,
his pockets were full of figs.

At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged. 

"That's not what I'm talking about! he said,
"I'm talking about a fig straight from the earth – 

gift of Allah! -- on a branch so heavy
it touches the ground.
I'm talking about picking the largest, fattest, 

sweetest fig
in the world and putting it in my mouth."
(Here he'd stop and close his eyes.)

Years passed, we lived in many houses,
none had figtrees.
We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets. 

"Plant one!" my mother said.
but my father never did.
He tended garden half-heartedly, forgot to water, 

let the okra get too big.
"What a dreamer he is. Look how many
things he starts and doesn't finish."

The last time he moved, I got a phone call, 

My father, in Arabic, chanting a song
I'd never heard. "What's that?"
He took me out back to the new yard. 

There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,

a tree with the largest, fattest, 

sweetest fig in the world.
"It's a figtree song!" he said, 

plucking his fruits like ripe tokens, 

emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.

--Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ), Ferguson-born Palestinian-American poet, translator, and author, from 19 Varieties of Gazelle.

Joha is a trickster in Arab tales.

Scripture reference: Mark 13:24-37 (Advent 1B)

Prayer In My Boot

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery

no self-portaits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep

--Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ), Palestinian-Amiercan poet, writer, and anthologist, from 19 Varieties of Gazelle:Poems of the Middle East, 1994