Poems about fruits

A selection of poems on fruit, as a kind of ode to late summer.

In summer, there’s fruit everywhere, outside, in the market. This summer has been a particularly fruit-filled (fruitful?) one for me. One of my friends from school moved into my house in London, and we’ve had the joy of reconnecting with each other. She loves fruit, and I have found myself becoming influenced. We spent a couple of days this summer exploring new parts of London. In doing so, we’d also always seek out a greengrocer’s and treat ourselves to a new delicacy: vanilla apricots, fresh figs, green dates (these last ones were very bitter and almost definitely unripe). I also travelled to Italy for the first time and saw olives growing on trees and marvelled all over again at fruit’s existence.

I’ve enclosed four poems I’ve written on fruit, and at the end I’ve linked two poems I’m inspired by. Please click through and enjoy.

Plum Jam / West Coast Oranges — also published online at The Isis Magazine

I’ve been thinking about getting old.

Not considering getting old: that would be

a luxury quite beyond me.

 

I am growing up;

Mother has grown a plum tree in the garden.

 

This year we had too many fruits,

the last almost none at all.

 

Lingering on each,

Brother and I pick them off,

 

one by one, noticing back inside

the sun stains on our cheeks.

 

We remember West Coast oranges

and our small cousin there

in similar heat, her gap-toothed grin.

 

At six, she used to describe

anything in the past as ‘yesterday’ –

‘we did that yesterday’

 

when it was really last week;

‘when you visited us yesterday’ –

 

I could not tell her I had

not visited her in a year.

 

I return to the plums,

preserve them in a sturdy mason jar

 

pride of place on the kitchen table.

It is the middle of summer and

 

Brother hits his head on the doorframe.

I am accidentally called Mother’s name.

 

We share the jam stood around

news reports and fading sunlight.

 

I spread it on wholegrain toast

trying not to think about how

 

it is ever so slightly bitter.

Untitled. Working title: Blackberries (in the spirit of Heaney)

Blackberries tumble

From my mouth

 

Mother I

Meant to be slow

 

Believe me I

Like them and you ever so much

 

But the deep juice is

All down my jaw

 

My shirt now blue-black

With the spoils of summer.

My brother doesn’t know how to eat a pear whole

I can never eat a pear without

Thinking of how my brother,

Years ago, in a neighbour’s car

Ate the whole thing,

The pale, juicy flesh,

The tough and stringy core,

Stem, stalk, whatever you call it,

Swiftly (s)coring a minor crime.

 

Upon being asked to put the remains

In a bag for later disposal

He looked up at me in mild alarm

And I stared back at him,

“What did you do with it?”,

Nervously expecting to see it

Smooshed, trodden into the floor.

“I ate it.”

“What, even the stem?”

He nodded sheepishly and

We laughed in astonishment.

 

I am awed at how my mother loved us, quietly,

To the extent my brother had never

Navigated a pear that hadn’t passed through

The steady slicing of a knife and her

Soft and sturdy hands.

Strawbs / The decision is made

I have decided:

bury me with a punnet of strawberries

so I can eat them after I die

though I think, by that point, it more likely

they’d turn and eat me. ∎

Blackberry-Picking — by Seamus Heaney

Read here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50981/blackberry-picking

This Is Just To Say - By William Carlos Williams

Read here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56159/this-is-just-to-say 

Photos taken on one of said trips to the greengrocer's with my friend. Strawberry sketch is my own.