Yesterday I caught a fleeting glimpse of a leaf-bare persimmon tree with maybe ten persimmons, pendulant, ornamental, like deep orange Christmas balls. But it was ten ravens in the tree that held my eye. The persimmons and ravens and bare limbs on a cloudy Marin New Year's Eve day closing towards dusk. Fire and night. Just after a cold snap when the ravens must know the getting's good or it will be. Maybe they were standing guard. I'm not from California, so persimmon trees are still so exotic. Just last year, I was the novice caught puckered trying to eat a local persimmon not yet ripe after reading Gary Snyder's "Mu Ch'i's Persimmons" poem. I learned you can force a persimmon ripe by freezing but it's got to be goop to eat.
Last night we ate sweet persimmon cake Debbie and Oliver fed us for New Years Eve dinner. Which of the three cured my hunger? The tree, the poem or the cake eaten with old friends? Those sugar-dark thawing persimmons, those feasting ravens, New Year's Eve.
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