Bananas

I hate waste and yet
I have tried in my life
to eat a banana every day.
It doesn’t usually work out
since I neither live in the tropics
nor go to the grocery store
more than once a week.
But over time
with lots of attention to detail
with willingness to be wrong and try again
I’ve learned to calculate
from the precise shade of green
in the grocery store how many days
before that particular bunch of bananas
will be too ripe to eat.
The best I can do is five.
If I know Paul will be staying over
I’ll buy six and force one on him
with his multi-grain Cheerios.
(He doesn’t feel the need to consume
bananas the way I do.
If I don’t watch him, he’ll forget.)
Every now and then
it works out perfectly
every banana eaten
before turning past its prime.
I’ve learned to enjoy them
when they still have a little green
when it’s hard to break them open
when they feel a little chalky
on the tongue and taste, well, unready.
There’s a touch too ripe that I can abide
if I peel them and throw them in the blender
for a smoothie or cut them up and freeze them
for some future use. But once they’ve browned
past a certain point there’s nothing to do
but throw them out.

I’m not sure why
I think I need to eat a banana every day.
I tend towards the Green among us
we believe in buying locally.
While they may try to produce wine
and raise llamas and hell I don’t know --
there may even be people here
trying to grow avocados --
I’m fairly certain no South Carolinian
is out there cultivating a sad little banana.
Yet I persist in buying them
imported from countries ruled by dictators
fumigated with toxins some harder-working
person than me has ingested into his lungs.
Can’t have it without suffering.
But that’s true of most things.
Maybe that’s why I eat them.
There’s this skin that has to be bruised
and eventually broken. But inside: oh.
Such sweetness. The rich texture.
Nothing else like it.
Worth taking the risk.