Tangerine by Ruth L. Schwartz
I’ve been getting Minneola tangelos from my little neighborhood grocery store for the last two weeks so this poem seemed appropriate. It’s from Ted Kooser’s website.
Tangerine
By Ruth L. Schwartz
It was a flower once, it was one of a billion flowers
whose perfume broke through closed car windows,
forced a blessing on their drivers.
Then what stayed behind grew swollen, as we do;
grew juice instead of tears, and small hard sour seeds,
each one bitter, as we are, and filled with possibility.
Now a hole opens up in its skin, where it was torn from the
branch; ripeness can’t stop itself, breathes out;
we can’t stop it either. We breathe in.
