Fig Tree, New Year's Day

Your fig tree in January, denuded now is more stately, if possible, in its stark seasonal solemnity than in summer's exacting extravagance. Its trunk, massive in manhood, is a citadel, supporting the curving bowl of branches as they bend back into themselves, becoming the bare, black sculpture Hemingway described in Paris in the 'Jardin de Luxembourg,' where following in his footsteps, we once strolled among old men playing chess, lovers entwined on park benches, fat city pigeons seeking sustenance. These prayerful branches, grown as large as the beanstalk giant of storybook lore, cup the sky-- and two gigantic roots, visible above ground in winter definition, should they be feet, would rock our foundations. Sprawling out in different directions, siblings still, they disappear below earth to wherever they travel--who knows where? Unlike Jack on his leafy ladder, climbing sky- ward, they turned toward some southern provenance: Provence, perhaps, as if impassioned for home.