The cold of figs from the freezer box
and laudanum. 

I think I would rather die
from figs than from poison--
Maybe it's because I would 
want to die clutching on to some
sort of symbol so many
other people held onto like
a promise of something eternal.
I know they were like me
and that they were looking for
something like honey-- holding on 
from verandas, leaning on library shelves, or
seated uneasily on a coffee table--
something cold and sweet.
Something quiet. No one wants
to die like Laudanum or Arsenic--
metalic and moaning like a hinge.
The Hebrews called the fig tree
the roots of peace and in the 
wake of Muhammad his followers
sung the fig tree as a "Tree of Heaven"--
"Oh God! If glass shards could take
me there, I could eat a thousand figs,
and be quiet like the gentle
casket of the ice box."
And I know we choose to make suicide
poetic so we can forget about
the glass shard in the figs
or the laudanum in the patient
glass that once held gin and tonic
and thumb prints from
a woman who wanted to write enough
to walk on the waistband of the earth.
I will always wonder what makes us
select our own death when we are instructed
that it is time.
And I want to know how many 
of us think of the end like a brunch menu
or did we always know--
just like the boy with the Hawaiian 
shirts I sat next to in cooking 
class Junior year always knew
he would die from pneumonia
as un poetic as the last dance at 
Homecoming where he leaned against the wall.
And I thought I should ask him
if he wanted to dance--
Would he have preferred the glass
shards and the cold figs or
the corked bottle of laudanum
that perched apprehensively like a priest
on the coffee table, giving last 
rights in haste and skipping
the 'Our Father', hand trembling
to feed him the Eucharist.
I have to say that I have always liked
figs but that I'm scared of them now--
I'm scared of figs and of clear 
glasses that might be full of water--
I'm scared of honey and maple syrup
and all the places that could hold
glass shards-- even the cores of 
Golden Delicious apples.
Just listen to me and don't
take the figs out of the ice box.
They weren't meant for you and
I don't know if they're meant for me--
but leave them there and someone
else will get to them--
We can make honey on the veranda--
lean on me like a book shelf 
and if we fall we can leave
the books on the coffee table
and clean up the glass shards
with a dust pan.