Fresh yellow ones on offer now at Persian produce store -

familiar fare for them, but not for me

To me they're strange, so bright! so bulgy-hard

on branching stems - a bit like swollen grapes

Do not know how they're eaten - cooked or raw? or even

if I want to try, why bother, really? what's the point . . . and yet

in time, as they glow golden, foreign, gleam out from their bin

on different autumn days, calling back my errant, gloomy eye

I wonder more, then I do ask, ask how, am answered

by pretty Persian lady smiling by the till —

You - you eat them! Like -

she gestures, puts fingers to her soft full ruby lips

Eat! Eat! Just eat! Like this! Just eat it! Is good!

And so I slowly choose one short gilt-laden vine

and carry it back home

The fruits are . . . unexpected to my timid touch

heavy, big and very firm

but yielding too as I unwrap

then gently wash them well

cool water running over golden forms

then place them on a small pale plate

In time I taste, just one -

tastes . . . kind of good to me

though not the same as what I think a date would be

should be? a different sweetness, texture, tang

yet something there I recognize as well, perhaps?

A writer, organizer of a local poetry event

asks me for morning coffee . . . to talk to me about my work?

And I write down the date, with care, though sure I won't forget

And when we meet, he tells me it's a date

And he knows dating, he knows all the apps

knows all that I don't know, have never known

Says he has another date, maybe right now? or very soon?

But no, that's wrong, but he has been in love of late

with someone, a fetching fish, it seems, from plenty of -

he is a practiced swimmer in that lake -

but that's all over now, that passioned piscine love

he's free. . . and I should go at night

to nearby bar where magic music plays, he says

Ask for his table, he says, maybe he'll be there

If not, still fine for me to ask and sit down there

I listen, watch stray sunray touch up fine hairs on his arms

turn them to pretty gold . . . he talks on quickly, talks a lot

I talk a lot - we talk a lot

No lack of things to say, it seems

some laughter ringing clear above our coffee cups

some darker words resound as well

he does not dwell but clearly does know pain

The early hours pass, then mid-day, then we part

He moves both big strong arms as if to touch, embrace me

then does not - we'll see each other

very soon, he says. . . his eyes shine, somehow holding mine

Alone I walk away - on pale grey day

this circled date upon the tenth month calendar

By accident, with strange fresh dates pale yellow in my house

somehow, I have been a date —

have had a date, been on a date

After years, so long together, so long alone

and never having really dated, not even very long ago

And now I have? have dated? maybe? maybe not . . .

Do I want it to be true? now, here, what would truth be?

Go home in shameful secret tears

eat up sweet-sour Persian fruit

'til all is gone, look down at empty plate

now need to throw the pits away