Ripe
by Scarlette Goh, Donvale Christian College
Years 7 – 8 Ekphrastic Poetry Finalist
‘Crow Eating a Persimmon’ by Ohara Koson (c.1910)
Ripe
A persimmon falls from the tree
plummets
its stomach lodged in its heart,
Gravity pulling it out of its circular demeanor
before it finally sinks into the dirt,
mingling with particles of dust as its juices cry to the soil
its skin breached and split
flesh bleeding the sweet blood of weeks of becoming.
It is ripe, perfect and nature-picked for disappearance
its mangled body a soft appeal
Just right, before an extra day or two gives way to
fibres melting into sour gander
straining against the thinning bag
of skin.
It is ripe, right now, in this moment; and this moment alone
never to be tasted this perfect in any other time than
in the exact condition it was made to be;
And ripeness strikes like a ticking bombshell,
a strict marker, counts the sunsets
before the plum sags in its own
and unravels on the ground.
This plum is only
perfect right now.
Ripe
rīpe
since the age of old English and ‘repan’,
the deadline was set
the time when everything is just
right, fall into place with a tick of a pocketwatch
And the grass used to whisper – placing their bets
on how many grains would elope from the heads of wheat
before the farmers returned to empty skulls.
when crops would open their petulant petals towards the inevitable chase of death
and their soggy-twitched hands would relinquish their orange fissures.
rīpe
To be ripe is to be
forgotten by blooming green,
the smokescreen of tentativeness,
The timid eyes of bats who see the time
you have bought.
And it lives in that fragile middle,
that trembling, golden almost.
ready and unready at once—
to open
break
give
Trusting that something will take you in
before you split.