Mango Economics

A poem.

Mango Economics What I really want
... Vanessa said –
this after we locked up our bicycles, hosed off, home – and I remembered
a tree behind the school, so I let her in on the secret, and she smiled Yes,
so we pedaled back across the island as a drawbridge rose and leaned there
against the clouds. At season's peak, Goliath was laden with scarlet fruit,
and the mangoes swayed to and fro in the breeze, a fat, orange heart
at the end of each vine, ripening, somehow, in unyielding, tropical sun.
Even the lowest proved too high to reach, so we kicked and kicked, but nothing fell,
and then:
Pick a stone up off the ground. Knock the ripe mangoes out of the tree.
One after the next, I brought them down. – Scott Brennan