Bananas.

Long banana leaves, agonized, brown and yellow in the torment of fall, crumple to a trunk that holds proudly the last hanging bunch of summer’s labor, ripened before deep cold comes to sap its strength.

“I am the last of what I hold

I am the strength of what I bear,

Cling tight sweet ones,

For the gardener comes to shear’”

Now in my hands, the hide, beneath yellow jackets, they scream, ‘unzip me’.

Gleefully I taste: ti’s the fruit of love and labor; that birth of sweet satisfaction.