A man and his fruit

(written 8 March 2001, in the outside kitchen)

I walked onto a field and saw a man crying. I asked him, "Why do your tears pour?" He held a rotten fruit in his hand then said, "This was beautiful once." He buried his face into his hat. The sun was high in the sky. The wind blew without apprehension, raising the emotion of the man to the gods above. His grief was complete. He stops crying and nostalgia strikes. "I planted a tree. I took care of it and gave it my love. As it grew, so did its beauty. It had become awesome. Every day, I stood and watched it. I was careful not to touch it for it might be disturbed."

Meanwhile, the tree bore fruit. From its buds it promised a bountiful and beautiful harvest. The sun would sometimes strike it and it glistened like a phoenix out of burning ashes. "I had become afraid to pick it", the man said. But the fruit had matured and was tired of hanging and not being consumed. The fruit would be so inviting to eat at times. But the man refused the urges and was just happy to watch. The fruit thought to herself, "If my beauty should lead to mere admiration and no consumption, I shall die a decoration and not live up to my purpose." She grew weary.

As the fruit season ended, the man took to his farm chores. But when he returned, the fruit, once so beautiful and inviting, had withered like a prune. He was devastated. The fruit, lifeless, hanging by just a fiber of a stem somehow new her admirer had arrived. She can now fall. As she did, the man rushed to catch it.

This is the man that I chanced upon a field, a sunny day in May. He was the farmer who was content to see but not to get the fruit. His admiration has rendered both him and fruit useless. No fruit to harvest, no taste of his hard work. The fruit had rotted in vain. The man had cried too much. The sun was setting. "I shall not see another beautiful fruit, nor shall I raise another. I will eat only of another's and remember the one so beautiful and awesome."