On A Day Of Still Heat Poem by James Charlton

In the still heat
a breadfruit ripens:
a multitude of tiny sunspots
mounted on hexagonal platelets,
green leather skin
and flesh of kneadable custard.


In the breadfruit
is hidden the sun,
in the sun
the breadfruit.
Before the heat reaches Earth,
the flames have already died;
before being picked,
the breadfruit is already rotten.


And all the unpurchaseable luxuries
- beetles, thunder, pebbles, twigs -
whose lives say, simply,
I accept,
are hidden in each other
and hide all things.