Myra Schenider
The Half Lemon
Look, a half lemon glistening in the larder.
Its scent is sharp as a knife’s nick, as the frost
the sun is stripping from the grass, and its rim
of pith is already hardening. I stare
at the circle of finely veined segments, a hymn
to symmetry, and conjure up the ghost
of a pistil in the central hole where petals
clung in their whiteness months ago. Despite
all our learning flowering and fruiting are still
mysteries. I don’t want them unravelled –
so often we use knowledge to breed blight.
I touch the woody seeds deeply lodged
in the lemon’s flesh, wanting to believe
flower and fruit, colour and zest will survive.
(first published in the Chimaera online magazine)
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