"Alder Street" by Josh Dugat

Our five-year-old neighbor calls from the roof

of his parents’ car, parked beneath the tree.

“Would you like to pick some cherries?”

He is barefoot, grinning, rouged in juice. 

You could be too. Mid-summer, mid-morning, 

the halogen sun humming long and early.

I climb. Smooth, scarred bark 

against my arches, skin to skin as cool 

as tidepool. Higher now, I’m bobbing in the spray

of gumdrop blood clots. Ruby orrery,

a hundred miniature Jupiters 

at every stage of storm. 

He works the cherries fast. Fist to lips, 

blister punctured to the pit, concrete 

as a syllable. My first taste makes me

pucker—morsel of peril, little jolt

more potent up here. It’s a risk 

to wait for sweetness to set. 

Learn from the birds. Take 

what you can get. I clutch a palmful, 

straddling a limb and plucking 

with my free hand. Fill it, too. 

For what, exactly, was I saving 

them? And when? There is a time 

to store away the grain, to be mindful 

when the rain may turn into a stranger. 

Now is not that time. You have been invited. 

You will come down soon enough. 

Maybe sooner. Eat the cherries. 

His hands are free and easy. 

Born and raised in Austin, Texas, Josh Dugat lives with his family in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is the author of Great and Small (Able Muse Press, 2025).