I eat quince to keep me sober. Its bitter, astringent taste wakes me to a world where sweetness is not the aftertaste, where juiciness cannot be taken for granted. It is the fruit for grown-ups.
Yet when you roast it, what a transformation! It melts in honeyed dew on your tongue. Do I likewise melt and linger when the fires burn me up? Or do I blend with molten iron to form a steely backbone?
Prickly bittersweet
Memory of golden fruit
Flower in the frost
This poem, written for Haibun Monday at dVerse Poets Pub, is dedicated to my favourite fruit, the hard-to-find and even harder-to-describe quince, and is dedicated to the memory of my favourite musician, David Bowie, who was likewise unique and hard to describe.
