The Bing cherry is named after Seth Lewelling’s Manchurian orchard foreman and friend, Bing. Bing was over 7 feet tall. The Rainier cherry, named after Washington State’s famous volcanic peak, was created in 1952 by cross-breeding the Bing and Van varieties.

Wikipedia

 

 

 

Yesterday I ate the last cherry in the white bowl on the varnished wood counter

In my warm kitchen.

It sat there in the bowl, shiny, impervious to dust, all afternoon staring up at me like a disemboweled eye.

Why did someone name the cherry Bing?

after a 7 foot tall Manchurian, a candidate for the forgotten man?

In my mouth the cherry felt like a vulnerable marble: warm not cold and very round yet porous; wondrous, and intimate: impossible for an explorer to resist. I pierced the shell of the cherry with my one Wisdom tooth and tasted through my teeth the sweet and the bitter, surprising youth and pungent old age. Holding it all under my tongue slowly moving the pieces I wondered was there anything else so delicious on earth as the last bite of anything on earth?