Prize the fruit whose flesh
makes the mouth pucker,
whose skins are scored
by cords or scales
that guard small, networked
palaces miserly of sugar.
Give them to children to peel,
to work on a slice until
the sour-drenched tongue
touches down on the seed:
wan cottonfruit, green mango
heaped with a ferment of tiny
shrimp; carambola, tamarind
rattling in its pod: each lesson
generously salted to make a book
of meagre days seem bearable.
In response to Via Negativa: Potter's field.