6 – The Lantern Fruit

We grow the lantern fruit in warm soil
Warm with sunlit days and life given
Whispering in anticipation

Start with a cutting
from an ordinary husk cherry plant
Physalis, my mother called it
Proper in her naming
But foreign, too
Keep your seedling safe and healthy
Water and manure, as you do
Until it stands a foot high
And then we begin in earnest:

Fill a terracotta pot –
glazed in bluestone powder
and oil-tree ashes
and a few flakes of dry blood.
Vitrified.
shining like dawn sky already –
fill it with the soil prepared by the grey mothers
and green fathers
and the children who help but do not understand what they do
or why.
Uproot your plant with care
(and love, remember to love)
and let it find home in the soft earth bounded by hard.

In the hazy, pooling waters of the river
Downstream from where the young people bathe,
but upstream from the old,
You will dig up a handful of silt
and fill a bucket of water
(any bucket – not all of a ritual is so strict, you know)
To mix and pour at the sapling’s stem.

And now for sun, and time, and water, and more time still
Over and again, until there is plenty of
bud and leaf
and flower, pollinated
and, with hope, fruit
Fruit, yes, but not ripe yet
It will mature with you.
(This is the part that matters most, my kin,
so listen close as skin.)

Breathe on it.
Breathe your life on the soft cover that will turn papery
On the green pebble that will swell to red globe
On the chrysalis of the fruit that guides.
And if you do it well, my sweet,
if you breathe hope and life and joy into it
Then it will grow great and glowing,
along with your pride.

So we pluck it, softly,
carrying it like a baby not yet swaddled,
careful not to break the husk
or pierce the cherry skin
To hang it by the winding path from here to nowhere –
or from nowhere to here, rather –
So that the souls may find their way.