Love Poem: Counting Coconuts
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Written by: Christy Chiang

Counting Coconuts

Each day many fall,

Them hardened furry balls.

And oh how they call

Perched on the coconut tree sturdy and tall



Nothing but ‘em coconuts on a dead-end street

With their half-formed wobbly meat

Them coconuts that leave

Me bitter from the sweet.



The tears of the coconut you see

Fall for ideas that never come to be

Dangling fibers from the tree

Bear witness to my priceless fee.



I count them coconuts on a dead-end street,

Each one rotten and each one sweet.

One rumbled of the thunder the night two hearts met

One caught all my laughter in its fibrous net.



O coconuts of the dead-end street

O coconuts rotten and sweet

O coconuts when they fall

Splatter into wounds bloody and raw



O coconuts of abundance

O coconuts of remembrance

Them coconuts, how they count how they

Count your absence