Whenever I chop dates,
I think of the desert:
the whispering sands
under the ever-moving wind.

There is nothing subtle or discreet
about the taste of dates;
they are uncompromisingly sweet
and irreducibly rich.

It takes care to chop dates
with scissors or a knife,
the sharp metal waiting like desert thorns
for unwary fingers.

The texture beneath my hands
is tough, gritty, sticky as tar—
but they melt in the mouth
like candy clouds.

The flavor has grown on me
over the years,
dark and strong as dune grass,
binding everything together.

The desertfolk say that
to plant dates is to plant the future
because they take so long to bear fruit
and because they are so precious.

I do not know why
it has taken me so long to like them,
the dark strange dates,
so like the desert and the folk.

I only know that this is something
arising in me but not from within,
windblown seeds taking root
like the fey foreign love of numbers.

Somewhere hidden in my heart
there lies an oasis shaded by date-palms
planted by strange beloved hands
from another world.

 

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Dates And The Desert by Elizabeth Barrette
originally published in the Summer 2012 print edition