"Others have mentioned the lemon's close relation to the sun based on visuals like shape, color, radiance... But what about effect? Look at the sun and your eyes squint themselves shut, blinded and blocked by a shrinking purple spot. Bite into a lemon and your mouth clenches, puckers forcibly. Both brilliant aggressors of the senses, compelling you toward the soothing, the sweet, the dark -- cloud-covered moon, soft purple plum."
One of my favorite forms to write in other than haiku is the prose poem. Or at least a couple of years ago they came in bunches. This one -- picked out of a notebook and cleaned up a bit -- isn't perfect, but shows some of the same instincts as a haiku might. It expands outward from a tight focus. It takes two objects or images and sets them against each other to see how they resonate. At the same time it's wholly different. In it, lemons and the sun are abstract categories. If it were a haiku I would be focusing on some individual, real lemon(s) -- even if I didn't have a lemon in front of me to write about. I might write a haiku about an imagined lemon, but would try to make it concrete, real and convincing.
In any case, felt like a change of flavor for today's entry...
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