When winter comes, I miss the summer’s fruits,
their bright-skinned suits.
Watermelons, green striped, piled high,
strawberries, whose red compounds and roots
in glowing stains, small seeded, multiply
the wonder that I feel when holding bags,
all cherry-filled,
and think of stems and pits, their sorry rags,
scattered, left behind, each mango nags
for us to buy and buy, or peaches grilled
with blackened lines, their endless roundness runs,
drips down the wrist,
blueberries in a bowl, like small dark suns
puckered at one end, the snap and twist
of apricots now loosened from their pits
for pie, and purple plums with sour skins
(a nice contrast),
farmer’s markets where cantaloupes will cast
their shadows long and low against the bins,
where soil and miracle combine and last
until devoured. See, your whole mouth grins
with honeydew and fig, and yet one knows
the night will come as juice runs down our chins,
fruit drops to seed,
the branches bare their bark, and winter wins.
–
Alexandra Umlas holds an MFA in Poetry from California State University, Long Beach and an MA in Education with an emphasis in cross-cultural teaching. Her poetry collection, At the Table of the Unknown, is available through Moon Tide Press.
