The kiwis ripen in winter.

The begins. After cosmic things finished big banging each other. Eve grew weary of the confines of a garden, followed the vine with her eye beyond the hill to the next valley. Adam got busy naming things with the in front over and over again, noun-ness, thus-ness he understood with practice.

kiwis sprawl on a strangle vine of bad reputation, a dominatrix that hides furred fruit dangling like scrotums of Dobermans with mange. Until you slice them to see into the universe. Gift from the vine that for all its worth grabs the car antenna in the driveway.

ripen gives in to cold fingers, just beyond rock hard, appreciative of two days in the kitchen’s yellow bowl

in is really when. After patience like the heron standing over the winter pond. After the apples fall, after the leaves fall from the apples. After you rake the leaves that fell from the apple tree. Greened for the dark year’s turn. Soon.

winter.–  Let cold go low for sweet. Pick dozens needing warmth. Buy navel oranges and put them too in the yellow bowl. The good news – radiant stars that seed your teeth, stars you didn’t know you needed.

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Tricia Knoll once grew kiwis…by the many dozens on a chainlink fence in Portland, Oregon. Now a Vermonter, she buys them in the grocery store. Her collection How I Learned To Be White received the Gold Prize for Poetry Book Category for Motivational Poetry in the Human Relations Indie Book Prize for 2018.