At one end of the bridge in her backyard,
she sits and eats the cherries picked today
and quickly rinsed before they made their hard
and swollen, tartly sweet-fleshed, sun-plumped way
into her mouth. She stops to look at one:
a globe of purple warm upon her palm,
its roundness highlit in the midday sun,
its brimming ripeness packaged like a bomb.

She wonders: is there any way to paint
a cherry so, to use pastels or ink
or film, to capture deep along with faint
and make it sparkle right? She doesn’t think
a picture shows the wonder underneath:
the pop that cherry makes between her teeth.