This Post Comes with a Warning for Lovers
There are times poems take me over. Usually they have more than eight words but this little one, included in Penguin’s Poems for Love, has had me turning myself inside out for days and days now.
What Love is Like
Love is like
a pineapple
sweet and
undefinable
(Piet Hein)
It has caused me to see pineapples in a whole new light. I’ve spent hours trying and failing to take photographs of their thick skins and juicy flesh. I’ve been luxuriating in their deep scent, making smoothies with them, grazing on them, caressing them in shops and wanting to recite the poem to everyone in sight.
I’d never, ever had thought of love being like a pineapple. At least, I thought I wouldn’t have. If I’d had to pick a fruit, I’d say it would have been grapes, apples or, maybe, passion fruit.
Now, I’m hooked on pineapples.
Go on, tell me which fruit, vegetable or anything else you would substitute for ‘pineapple.’
Love is like a prickley pear..proceed with caution, once pass the thorns the rewards are great, delve in and enjoy! Or Love is like a banana sometimes creamy and smooth other times unripe and tart..and watch out for the outer skin as mishaps can occur..if not careful!
Joni, I love your balanced view of love. Banana skins certainly can’t be ignored!
Sonnet XXX
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.
~ William Shakespeare
Oh Van, so wonderful. Thanks.
Love is like a strawberry
Rarely cheap
Always extraordinary
🙂
Robin, strawberries and love certainly go hand in hand for me too; not least through their association with tennis.
Wow – good question. I’d say love is like a tomato. You think it’s a vegetable – firm and plump and full of substance. Yet, it surprises you with its seeds, putting it in the category of blueberries and raspberries. Feminine, tasty, curvy. Love is like that – you think it’s one thing, and then it becomes another, even though it looks/feels/smells the same from one day to the next. :-0
Pam, what a great response. I will have a whole new view of tomatoes from now on.
Love is like a pomegranate/sweet and sour?
CC, interesting perspective and not unlike Joni’s above. So many sides to love!
.. and now you have planted the pineapple seed with us! I can smell it Jean 🍍🍍🍍
Love is grapes. It can be transformed and lasts forever with careful preservation.
Val, yes I like that preservation aspect with care. Many thanks. Off to graze on a grape or two!
Ha! Love pineapples. I used to haul them – over here in eastern North America the pineapples generally travel with the bananas by ship from the tropics and then by truck to destination. We do not eat a lot of them so a truck destined for a wholesaler would have about 25 skids of bananas and one skid of pineapples. For a few bucks (US) the dock guys would throw on an extra case of pineapples. I would eat fresh pineapple (which can be messy) all the way to the customer. Yum!
Paul, just love this description of your relationship to pineapples.
Had to smile at a ‘skid’ of bananas!
Peaches are what come to mind for me, Jean. Warm, soft and oh so sweet, yet ever so often when you bite into them, you may find a worm! 🙂
Oh Nancy, that worm makes me wince!
Hmmm… isn’t love supposed to be warm ‘n fuzzy like peaches?!? 😉 ♥ ❤