Poet Ruth L. Schwartz writes of the glimpse of
possibility, of something sweeter than we already have that comes to us,
grows in us. The unrealizable part of it causes bitterness; the other opens
outward, the cycle complete. This is both a poem about a tangerine and
about more than that.
Tangerine
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.
From Dear Good Naked
Morning, © 2005 by Ruth L. Schwartz.
Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. First printed
in Crab Orchard Review, Vol. 8, No. 2. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry
Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited
poetry.
This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2006.
