Pomegranate

Today I ate 

the pomegranate that I stole
last Saturday. I picked it
from an ikebana on Culture Day--
which somehow seems appropriate
because I have never bought a pomegranate
in my entire life
and sense culture is born
from and for thieving.
It has been
on my stainless steel counter-top
since, aging like a sinking king--
its spiky crown slouching east.
Its shrinking skin cracking more
and more open daily,
showing wider seams
of its jewelish meat.

I worked one of its splits apart,
my wedging thumbs
dividing the whole in two,
and ate it
with a woman who stands
at the gate of several worlds--
the secret and revealed,
the sacred and profane,
the heaven and hell. Eating
mostly silent,
as though it were
John Cage's birthday--
which it might actually be--
we commented
on the husky hisses emitted
in dismembering
a pomegranate's pieces.
Persephone must have felt likewise,
looking into one's rubied brain,
picking out particular memories
with stained finger tips,
letting the seeds sow at her feet.

I just heard a few
old women laughing
outside my window, so sure
they will last till nightbreak,
so happy to speak of
the schedule of the trash truck.
The shell of the pomegranate
is stuffed deep in
my flammable garbage bag,
obscuring the evidence
of what, like me,
has surely vanished unknown.

jerry gordon
11.6.2012