MANGOES

MANGOES

A colourful boy in Star Wars T-shirt
and a saffron batik sarong
tightrope-walking along a mango tree’s
top branches
figurine fired in the midday sun
is raining down on the parched red earth
glittering hard green fruit.

Seeing you focus binoculars
to pick him out
as a black-headed oriole of Ceylon
for your notebook’s cage
he shins down the trunk embracingly
to bring you a gift of mangoes robbed
with a tartly negotiable smile.