I forget what prompted me to write this amusing and very informative poem. I was determined it would not be merely funny. Half a day's research in the reference library was needed to cram it with facts.

Like many of my poems, it benefits from a heartfelt performance.

BANANAS

They’re all just yellow! Bananas!
(Though some are green, or speckly brown)
And that half-hearted bend, tease or charm us,
-- Comes from growing upside-down!

Did you know they’re sterile? Bananas?
Just a pointless store of starch.
Fruitless fruit, without seed. Why harness
Hot sun, swishing rain? Greedy arch!

As it bends to the earth, growing riper,
The swag nearly touches the ground.
A burglar would stagger, to swipe a
Hoard, stacked so high, that he’d found.

Such betrayal of pollinators’ roaming,
When the bats came flitting through the dusk;
Pale petals glimmering in the gloaming;
Wasted journey! No seedling! Bloated husk!

But when a hopeful sucker
Comes proddling from a distant root
Greedy for some farmyard muck or
Anything, to feed the new shoot,

That’s when some hoarded riches
Might drop, overripe, from the sky,
And, powered by the rotting sweetness,
The young shoot grows towering high.

A bit of lateral thinking!
Mother nature’s sleight of hand:
The stooping fertilizer, sinking
Over new growth, struggling from the sand.

So, if your work seems pointless,
Sterile, dispirited, lost,
Watch out for sky-high compost
Dumped where you need it most.

They’re not just a joke! Bananas!
Another way of coping: a surprise!
So let the yellow bendy fruit charm us,
Full of energy! Stored from the skies!

* Find out about other bananas, and why only the sterile yellow ones are familiar in importing countries.