-This poem reflects on cantaloupe as a ripe and cooling gift of high summer, where heat and growth are transformed into sweetness, nourishment, and shared abundance.
Split open on the kitchen board,
it gives its cool and fragrant heart,
orange laid against the rind,
a sweetness kept beneath the field.
The knife comes clean through seeded light,
the halves shine soft in window heat,
and all the summer it has stored,
seems gathered in that tender flesh.
No blossom stays this long in hand,
no rain, no wind, no noon field glare,
but here the season settles down,
into something cut and shared.
So much of ripening comes to this,
not only growth, but what can nourish,
the earth made mild, and sweet, and full,
enough for hunger and the hand.