My Pomegranate
Because your universe of hidden passages
And juicy tidbits
Belies your leather-like exterior
Because your hive of thin membranes
Supports your plump ruby jewels
Because you taste sweet yet tart
Because your fragrance is unearthly
Because each of your kernels
Contains a crunchy seed
I could harvest and plant them
Because your essence is crimson
It stains me
As I devour you
c. 2007 G. MacDonald
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This poem was inspired by my schoolyard fascination with my Italian girlfriends who would open and devour this exotic fruit during recess.
It was written for a continuing education poetry course for which we were tasked with preparing a descriptive paragraph then taking the concepts and structuring them into poetic verse. This is the final version of my poem after several re-writes under the marvellous tutelage of my instructor Marilyn Gear Pilling, an award-winning Canadian poet and author of fiction books. The fifteen or so students in our class were inspired by Marilyn’s lectures, personal insights, and her enthusiasm for our budding talents, not to mention the wonderful end-of-term bash at her house where we drank wine, ate our pot-luck contributions, and shared some of our work in a poetry circle.
While poetry is often written in isolation it is meant to be shared. Through “workshopping” your work in a non-threatening environment it can only improve. I have written poetry all my life but very little is yet published… It resides in scraps of paper, journal jottings, and old digital files on various computers. I look forward to sharing more with you and getting your feedback.
If you have a poem you would like me to consider sharing from this site, let me know!
Click here for more information on Marilyn Gear Pilling and a list of her publications.
2007 – 2010 Glenda MacDonald