Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘quince’

Strange

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 8, 2025| 9 Comments »

So darn ugly, the quince,
pockmarked and shriveling,
lumpy and mottled,
sloughing their thin gray fuzz,
but from across the room,
I smell them, intensely sweet,
exotic and milky, rose-like,
honeyed, apple-ish.
They’re like a bowl of painful
memories I’d rather not look at
and yet find myself nose-deep
in them by choice, astonished
at how complex it all is.
Ache. Beauty. Repulsion.
Desire. What most moves us
is seldom simple. Or perhaps
it is simple as this: The world
is full of the strangest gifts.
Like the scent of the quince
floral and tart. Like that
memory I once ran from
that now is treasure
to my heart.

Read Full Post »

Lessons from a Small Bush

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 25, 2024| 6 Comments »

Because it brings her enormous joy,
this pink-petalled flowering quince
that grows just outside
my mother’s back door,
I long to give her a thousand
such quince bushes,
all of them long-blooming,
voluptuous, thornless,
all of them lining her walk.
Though the other part of me
wants to honor how
it takes only one plant
to bring her such elation.
I am instantly stunned
with the wisdom of enoughness,
astonished again at how praise
needs nothing more than a crumb.
Somehow letting go of a thousand
imaginary quince bushes floods me
with a emptiness so great
I fall more wildly in love
with a single pink flower
and the luck-drunk awe of my mother.

Read Full Post »

Quince

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2022| 6 Comments »


for Christie


Shaggy and mottled,
lumpy as an old woman’s thighs,
five quince recline in the shallow bowl
and all day I marvel
as the delicate scent opens,
exotic and fragrant,
like guava, like honey,
like citrus, vanilla.
Every year my friend
harvests me quince from her tree,
and every year they somehow
astonish me again.
As if I didn’t know.
As if their sweetness is new.
Perhaps the annual forgetting is a gift,
because what joy
in falling in love with them
again each year,
their bright yellow scent,
the honest perfume of friendship,
the thrill in their ripening.

Read Full Post »

For the Lumpy, Unripe

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 18, 2015| 2 Comments »

one lumpy

unripe

quince

turns

to stirring

perfume

given

the chance

Read Full Post »