For other fruits my father was indifferent.
He’d point at the cherry trees and say,
“See those? I wish they were figs.”
In the evenings he sat by our beds
5 weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.
They always involved a figtree.
Even when it didn’t fit, he’d stick it in.
Once Joha was walking down the road
and he saw a figtree.
10 Or, he tied his camel to a figtree and went to sleep.
Or, later when they caught and arrested him,
his pockets were full of figs.
At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged.
“That’s not what I’m talking about!” he said,
15 “I’m talking about a fig straight from the earth—
gift of Allah!—on a branch so heavy
it touches the ground.
I’m talking about picking the largest, fattest, sweetest fig in the world and putting it in my mouth.”
20 (Here he’d stop and close his eyes.)
My Father and the Figtree 1
INDEPENDENT READING
My Father and the Figtree
Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Years passed, we lived in many houses,
none had figtrees.
We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets. “Plant one!” my mother said,
25 but my father never did.
He tended garden half-heartedly, forgot to water, let the okra get too big.
“What a dreamer he is. Look how many
things he starts and doesn’t finish.”
30 The last time he moved, I had a phone call, my father, in Arabic, chanting a song
I’d never heard. “What’s that?”
He took me out to the new yard.
There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,
35 a tree with the largest, fattest,
sweetest figs in the world.
“It’s a figtree song!” he said,
plucking his fruits like ripe tokens, emblems, assurance
40 of a world that was always his own.
What is the main structure of the poem?
Responses

A It is a descriptive poem that provides details about the natural world.

B It is a narrative poem that tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end.


C It is a lyric poem that explains the thoughts, feelings, and actions of a single speaker.


D It is a rhyming poem with a strict structure that mirrors classical poetry.