Why do we do it?
Here I am again sitting
at the board, my left
eye watering, blind
except for smeared out side light
but me tapping out
letters and phrases
as if that matters to me,
to anyone else.
I just read some guy
writing of his childhood friend
and an exotic
Brazilian fruit tree
I had to look up to know.
They hung cardboard stars.
they cut from a box.
Meanwhile it rained some last night
and that broke the heat.
August 23, 2013 9:23 AM
This poem is a spin-off of
"Making Stars With Jacob Lawrence", written by Myronn Hardy
The Grumichama is a fruit tree that grows native to southern coastal Brazil. It has been imported to various locations world wide but with spotty success as it seems to be picky about where it lives. For example, the tree does all right in some Florida locations but not others and better, it seems, around Palm Springs in California. The fruit is edible and quite tasty, but the sepals and the size and number of the seeds detract from the experience. There are two varieties, the more common red fleshed fruit variety and the less common white fleshed fruit variety. The fruit is reported to taste rather like the true sweet cherry but with a touch of aromatic resin added in. In Hawaii, where the Grumichama grows well, the fruit is eaten out of hand when ripe and made into pies and jellies when a bit greener.
So say the botanists at Perdue University, a research university in Lafayette, Indiana, flagship of the six university Perdue system.
Of course it matters, and well you know it my friend!
ReplyDeleteI am of course thinking of how most of the people I know glaze over when I wax enthusiastic about either poetry or the things I learn as I write it. So the question "matters to whom?" is real enough, I think.
DeleteI will cherish and remember Brazilian Cherry for longer than I will remember Grumichama but nonetheless no one I have brought the tree up to so far gives a rip.