POEM - The Other Side of Ripening

The other side of ripening is what
Waits for us on those snowy days of white
Which wrap us up, taut and un-giving, like
Snowmen with brittle fingers and frostbite.
The other side of ripening is what
Is ours when we use the syntax of “wait”;
When we live in sentences that always
End with periods instead of commas;
When our verbs commit a sad suicide
Instead of living with things which gestate
And bring forth the sanguineous touch of nouns.
Life, we learn, is just a run-on sentence.

This is the grammar of all living things:
Worse than fruit wasted on bedraggled vines,
Worse than weeping flowers at summer’s end
Is what goes by unexplored and untried;
For those things that we think we cannot share
With others, can never dream the harvest.

M C Biegner