Produce Basket

Cherry 

Whence the gravity of your deep, deep red, o cherry? 

You’re some vestigially corporeal internal organ of an angel, 

     perhaps, 

lingering since the celestial being could never quite shed 

a taste for sole in sauce and malicious wit. 

These weaknesses lead direct 

     to the fruit’s fine and parabolic taste. 

The lover of cherries is chained to earth’s rack 

knowing no better than to eat and eat 

until the bowl is exhausted -- 

the plate littered with stems and stones. 

The grave sweet pear philosophizes, 

    grows Sitzfleisch, 

its subtly honeyed heft 

    aspires to heaven still, 

    borne up by old afflatus. 

The pear d’un certain age remembers still – 

each time it hears the wind or sees the sun – 

the nectar and ambrosia of its youth -- 

 white blossoms fluttered perfect, 

    without thought. 

The banana’s not at all 

    like Carmen Miranda, 

stodgy rather with carbohydrate respectability, 

wrapped in the most mild of sugars, 

mysterious seeds all but intangible, 

and a flavor that fits noiseless to the tongue, 

a blanket of taste leaving no room at all, 

a worthy confidante in tiny house, 

full of lace and African violets, 

 hissing radiators, and mail order catalogues. 

And when the parcel arrives in the mail, 

the banana is always satisfied. 

 The apple’s a salesman 

    of industrial screws 

        with a sample case in the trunk, 

        spare suit hanging by the back seat, 

        smelling of cologne and slick hair, 

he dreams of fraternity friends 

and that ingenious Green Delicious 

from the orchard’s edge 

he met one night in Cincinnati 

    and never saw again. 

The grapefruit’s 

a lovely face 

glimpsed from a train window, 

hanging laundry 

    like an angel, 

    linens aloft like wings 

    in a small town back yard long ago. 

Grapefruit taste’s cut loose 

    from the ground and mounting fast to vanish, 

but still the fruit has vegetable leather skin, 

that seems to bear the onus of memory

of faithless friends, unaccountable pain, 

     failed exams, and indigestion, 

till the knife frees them all 

and displays inside 

 a star’s radial symmetry 

bracing to tongue and eye alike, 

consumed in a flash. 

Carrot 

how honest an orange your tone 

you never would deceive 

and your pattern, 

    with tapering elegance 

    though none would take you 

        for a debutante, 

your inner core’s like some great oak’s 

and you have, too, an esoteric side, 

secret given only to strivers with good teeth

 (let me kneel beside Bugs Bunny!) 

though shorn of your fine feathery top 

 and trimmed of that lowest reach of root 

that pursued ever downward into earth 

in search of inspiration 

flayed now of your wholesome skin 

    and eaten without thought 

    I hope to steal your wisdom yet 

o honest orange carrot