With the last fig clinging by a stem
to its silt vine, it’s ready to be twisted off.
Anyone could do it, but it has to execute
its own move. This is its fate, you see?
The fig with its wasps must ride the bough
all the way down to the give in the ground,
to break the earth, to bury old with new.

If it’s too soon for so deep a dark─
wasps still laying eggs in the flowers within,
not ready, not ready at all─ how much better
it would be if the branch resisted,
snapping back without flinging the fig
onto dirt full of the ends of other lives.
At least, not with the wasps still inside.

– Cheryl Snell