After a long hard decade, Miranda asks for a poem about feijoas - Emma Neale

Small hard green breasts budding on a young tree
that doesn’t want them, can’t think how to dance
if it has to put up with these;

yet over summer the fruits swell and plump:
frog barrel bodies without the jump or croak
limes in thick velvet opera coats

love grenades to throw like flirt bombs
for your crush to catch and softly clutch
before they release their sweet seductions

and when the congregation and the choir
in the Tongan church next door exalt in hymns
while their brass band soars and sforzandos in,

a fresh feijoa crop tumbles to the grass
as if the tree’s just flung down its bugle mutes
in a mid-life, high-kick, survival hallelujah.

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Emma Neale (born 1969) New Zealand
Source: NZ Poetry Shelf

• Feijoa - Acca sellowiana – a species of flowering plant in the myrtle family
• Sforzando  - in musical notation, to play a note with sudden, strong emphasis