Fruits and Vegetables
/Carol Hart
How complicated you were! You could be
so kind, so sweetly consoling, when it came
to skinned knees and childhood illnesses.
But you never kissed or hugged, and rarely
praised. I remember asking, Am I pretty?
You said, Yes, to me you are. All mothers
think their children are good-looking.
You were determined to be a perfect mother
by the light of the USDA Food Pyramid,
which led to our war of wills over lima beans.
I didn’t know then how delicious they are fresh,
simmered with butter, thyme and cream. Maybe
you never knew. Yours were Birds Eye Frozen—
boiled, salted, turned out onto the plate.
I was fussy about seeds and peels. You bought
a bunch of Thomson Seedless. I refused them.
So you sat with paring knife and patience,
and peeled them, one by one. I watched,
amazed, how carefully you stripped away
the thin skins, wasting no flesh, leaving
the grapes perfectly intact, one by one,
until you filled a bowl which you put
in front of me. I spooned them down in
greedy mouthfuls, not pausing to savor or
admire how pretty they were, shimmery pale,
delicately striped with dark green veins.
You were understandably annoyed.
Because this bowl of grapes was your love.
The only love you had to give, which was not
the love I hungered for and craved, which
I refused in this way, turned into nothing.
Author’s Note: It would be nice to say this poem came from some Proustian encounter with a bunch of grapes. But it arrived more subtly, on the occasion of my last birthday, a time for looking backwards. Thinking of my mother, I remembered her peeling grapes for me—remembered as well how I had gobbled them down, though I knew I was behaving badly. The motive given in the poem might be true. It is at least an offering to my mother’s memory, my attempt to understand her at last.
Carol Hart is the author of two works of fiction, A History of the Novel in Ants (2010) and Marius & Delia, by D. M. (2021), both published by SpringStreet Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Scientific American, Southern Poetry Review and Paperbark. She lives in the Philadelphia area.
