The ending swallows the beginning's tale.

     John Hollander, "Kinneret"

He had not quite forgotten it was there.

Even these years later he doesn't regret

Letting her have the house, the pasture

Long before gone to weed, and the barn

Leaning a little more each year then into

The empty stalls; the dusty bedrooms

Of children grown and gone before him.

Of the land and its trees he most misses

The plum, how on those many mornings

He would gather what had almost ripened,

Bringing them in to the sun-filled kitchen

Window sill, and one by one, day by day,

Taste the only sweet flesh he knew then.

And even now he thinks of how it must be,

The tree left unregarded and untrimmed,

Branches wild and gnarled to breaking,

The plums all withered windfalls; how

Even if he could go there now and pick

One, press his fingers into its furred flesh,

Twist and turn to halve it, half would be

Soft and brown with bruise, the rest red

At the heart, broken and bitter stone-deep.