Shipment.
Tonight, I unboxed the two jars
sent so lovingly packed from one island over,
and first opened the one brimming with
purely alive fresh island olive oil,
breathed it in and thought of the young trees
I met a few years ago as they stood spindly
on a volcanic hillside with the impossible blue
of Hawaiian oceans below and behind them,
young trees just starting, just planted,
and now look, without my having to do
anything but age, they are growing olives
and the olives are picked by friends and
by people I have never met but whose labor
means that I am holding a jar of light green
beauty that, tomorrow, will meet the French bread
I knew I was saving for something.
And if that was not enough, the other jar
was captured sunshine and fragrant glory,
passionfruit butter handmade and hand-poured
and then tucked so carefully into that box
to ride the sea to me, to my kitchen counter,
where I dipped chunks of my dear friendʻs
banana bread into it and ate it feeling like
Winnie the Poo and his jar of honey,
sticky and happy and not entirely sure
if all that gold was fruit or honey or love
or yes.
