Seedless Orange
March 29 2015


The orange
in the back of the fridge
is encased in mould.

Shrunken fruit
in a green constricting husk,
wisps of white

at the leading edge

of the slowly spreading corruption.

Flat, where it sat so long
back behind the condiments.
The ball-park mustard,

from industrial yellow

to jaundiced dull.
The dregs of ketchup

gone rusty brown,
hard crust
stuck to its screw-on top.

Behind the tupperware box
of unidentified remains,
leftovers
growing their own
mysterious flora.

A navel orange

as if mother-born,

a dimple, perfectly formed

in the finely textured skin

of its smooth round belly.
Seedless, barren,
a biological dead-end

the last of its line.
That has failed
at the two exigencies of life
-- reproduction

and survival.

Evolution
over millions of  years

has all converged on this,
left to rot
in the back of the fridge.
Like the sterile, the childless,
shrinking into their dotage
forgotten, as well.

White fuzz
clouds the shelf.
Spores, filling the void
as the life force flourishes,
doubling over-and-over
feeds on itself.

Even here

in the cold and dark

in the back of the fridge;

an orange, slowly transformed

into something else.

This started out as a still life (how many times do I have to say that each time I put pen to paper, I aspire to write a simple Haiku; but my prolixity inevitably prevails …lol!), then turned into something else. And not only did it get wordy; it took the usual dark turn – my terminally morbid frame of mind, I guess.

 …Except, in the end, I may have just managed to redeem the darkness! I'll leave it to the reader to decide.

I feel I need to add that my fridge does not have mysterious things growing in it. And also that I can't stand either mustard or ketchup, so -- the usual disclaimer -- any resemblance to actual condiments in this poem is unintended and purely coincidental.