Grape and Plum: A Raisin to Prune

Something says
Mature
about a grape
or a plum
per se
symbolically
a tinge of empyrean
or is it in the color?

Have you
perchance
tasted a sour one?

You know you cannot tell
by the purple shell-
when even the peachiest flesh
bites back, bitterly.

Grape and plum wind
up to a higher air, elevated
and astutely erudite.

Ever-enduring and life-sustaining
fruits and stones, vines and arbors
plucked and dried to dehydration
where sugar is preserved
inside the lines.

Out from the water
which now makes our skin
resemble these: raisins or prunes,
making wine or meijiu
with the aide of lemons.

A tangled path,
the wrath of a wife
whose plum mad
one of her perfect speci-
mens-
was cooly
stolen from the fridge.

Maturely,
with sticky June juice
on her chin, she wins-
she smiles at the sweet one
she got,
knowing these
are life lessons
in taste.



Image of painting by Anne Vallayer-Coster, c. 1778 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.