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The Melon

By Charles Simic b. 1938 Charles Simic

There was a melon fresh from the garden

So ripe the knife slurped

As it cut it into six slices.

The children were going back to school.

Their mother, passing out paper plates,

Would not live to see the leaves fall.

I remember a hornet, too, that flew in

Through the open window

Mad to taste the sweet fruit

While we ducked and screamed,

Covered our heads and faces,

And sat laughing after it was gone.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2009).

Biography

Charles Simic is widely recognized as one of the most visceral and unique poets writing today. Simic’s work has won numerous awards, among them the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and, simultaneously, the Wallace Stevens Award and appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate. He taught English and creative writing for over thirty years at the University of New Hampshire. . . .

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