Lauro Palomba

Climacteric

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.

‘Climacteric they’re called’
the fruit seller piped up
at Saturday’s farmers’ market
spelling it out for a woman rapt
(his brawny look likely assisting)
‘the likes of apricots, bananas,
peaches, plums ripen
after you pick ‘em;
apples, cherries, grapes,
watermelon, a bunch of others
don’t; something about ethylene,
a gas, sugar and starch
you can look it up’
I’ve been turning it over since,
fruits in their human guise
whose ethylene never activated
picked by a trauma, a resentment,
betrayal, complacency, sabotage
or by parental perversity passed on
for babies aren’t born biased
as puppies aren’t whelped vicious
At whatever age our formation
emerges into awareness,
regardless of the harm done
while in our callowness,
then comes the climacteric moment
unscented and invisible
when maturity fails
initiating rot rather than ripening
or, conversely in that twinkling,
seeding wisdom

Lauro Palomba has taught ESL and done stints as a freelance journalist and speechwriter. Approximately ninety of his poems and short stories have appeared in American and Canadian literary journals.