The girls fought over a strawberry today.
The older one had swiped it from the younger
one’s hand and popped it in her mouth.
The younger one threw open the door
and yelled for me to turn off the lawnmower
so I could hear about the larceny.
Of course every mother or father has
witnessed a strawberry dust-up before,
even if it wasn’t about a strawberry.
They’ve put down the shovel or spatula
to receive the calamitous news.
It got me thinking about when we argued about
the television volume a couple of days ago. I
thought, you know, a strawberry really
is a lovely thing to fight about.
—
Clay Carpenter is a newspaper editor in Corpus Christi, Texas. His poems have appeared in literary magazines including Poetry Quarterly, The Orange Room Review, Down in the Dirt and Falling Star Magazine. This poem was originally published in Vox Poetica.
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