“Fruits and Nuts” - A Poem About Vic's Death

 

My brother died almost three years ago. He was in his fifties, but he was the youngest in our family when I was growing up, so I can't help thinking of him still as my baby brother. In this season that year, I was visiting him, the first time I was able to after Covid began and the last time I ever saw him. Sadness has been coming up a lot.

I read Hugh O’Donnell's prose poem "Fruits and Nuts" this morning and the last paragraph gave me a breath of insight that made me think a little differently about my grief. Probably just for the moment. This is what came of it.

Fruits and Nuts

 

"We love the flowering stage…

But how quickly we lose interest as their petals fade"

Hugh O'Donnell

 

Or maybe look at it this way

my little brother

 

Your death not incomprehensible

not anomalous

not outrage

not shock

 

But fulfillment

bud into flower

flower stretching open    soliciting

a beetle's caress

petals falling away

and the slow unseen swelling of the fruit

 

You are the fruit which nourishes 

even as you loose your hold and drop

 

I yearn for every age of you

and every age you never reached

I yearn for the fresh return of you

renewal of you

unharmed unblemished

free to live in confidence and joy

 

You are the fruit that rests among the grasses

your sweet scent inhaled from afar

from your seeds new trees are born

from your memory new tenderness and truth

Image: A black and white picture of two little white boys. The one on the left is Guy. He has his arm around his younger brother's neck. That little one is Vic.