Bruised Fruit

In the heat of summer the shade feels good
and the cool of orchard trees adds its soothing delight
with the sky above a porcelain blue as bees visit
flowers dreaming of honeycombs and nighttime rest.

Each summer turns to fall, and the apple blosssoms
turn to sweet smelling fruit, red and golden, round and ready.
The fruit that gets picked in time is crisp and full, and quenches
both hunger and thirst, adding a measure of hope before winter's frost.

It is hard not to notice the fruit that was ignored, that fell to the ground
already past its time, its falling sounds muffled by its bruises and cuts.
Broken and forgotten, it is not the bee it gets as a visitor, but the wasp
and fly, and perhaps a tired possum or raccoon, as the fruit becomes ugly and worn.

So it is with the wounded heart, that is so full of love, it bursts off its branch
and drops to the ground where its hopes and dreams end up sprained and bruised
no longer appealing in form, its wisdom ignored and forgotten, the shadow
of contempt and carelessness now a path for broken dreams and damaged songs.

The mirror shows what I do not wish to see, the bruises of my heart colouring
my footsteps in the journey that is my life, the wounds inside trying to make
their way onto my form and my skin. It is a stranger I see, an orphan at sea
living on a distant shore, sending paper birds across the waters, reaching
up to the paper skies where no wounds or bruises can reach its paper glitter stars.


Trudi Ralston.
March 31st, 2016.