by David M. Alper

His fence is peeling and splintering but staying its course
like a man hanging on to his last good secret.
I sit on my porch and watch him, the way he labors among the
tomatoes, his bruised but steadfast hands.
Sunlight scars the gray in his hair.
He is a man who knows what a root will do to a sidewalk, and what it’s
like to have something so tender in your hands that it will grow and
nourish you. There is loneliness in this knowledge.
A tomato, red and dense, bursts its skin.
It is an accident of too much sun and too much rain.
The sweetness is sadness.
He stretches out and devours it.

David M. Alper‘s poetry appears in The McNeese Review, Apricity Magazine, The Bookends Review, and elsewhere. He is an educator in New York City.