Strawberries in the Winter

Strawberries taste like summer, with a sweetness that gives me visions of green strawberry fields

With bright red gems glittering with the morning’s slowly dissipating fog

And fragile white, round-winged butterflies fluttering through the miles and miles of sweet strawberries.

Tasting a strawberry in the midst of a winter, I wonder how far we roam to find strawberries in a place so cold

Across the country, through the snow, to the other side of the world where it isn’t below zero

Or maybe just a little down south, where the porch is warm enough to languidly rock and watch the trucks drive by

Through day and night, to bring these strawberries out of the light and hope they survive.

A journey up the coast, to where the sun doesn’t shine and the earth is too cold for strawberries to grow

They taste like another place, or another time, as I’ve witnessed summer before with my own eyes:

It smells like the green leaves of the strawberry, tastes just as sweet and sounds like cicadas

Feels like sweat on my forehead, my bare feet on sand and a cool salty wind with an ocean wave cadence.

I wonder if strawberries in the winter taste just as nostalgic as pomegranates in the summer

To fully validate the irony in that I only miss one when I’m with the other.