The Fruits

O Fruits!

You come in manifold shapes and tastes.

Your aroma blowing in the soft wind titillates.

Your colors and hues unbend the rainbow.

I saw all colors on you face, colors I didn’t know exist.

Sun and moon bathe you; earth and water nourish you.

The bees haunt the flowers but can’t bore through you.

You sport a shell, a thick rind, a thin skin, a silk-soft epidermis.

Your face has many eyes, your pate with a crown of leaves.

You are round and red, yellow and mellow, green and sheen.

Your puckered skin doesn’t deter me.

We skin you; we skin you not—to eat you.

You change colors like autumn leaves.

They wither and fall; you are ready to eat.

You change colors: green to yellow to brown to black.

Why can’t I change colors like you?

The first bananas in America came with precise instructions.

Watching a monkey would have done the trick; man see, man do.

Boys and girls, eat the skin and drupe and cast the stone.

Eat the pulp, chuck the rind, and spit the seeds.

Chill the melon, scoop the flesh, and chuck the rind.

Bore the core, if you must; bite the apple.

Veeraswamy Krishnaraj