Poem: Ode to FruChocs

Ode to FruChocs

Like oxygen and joy: your mystic force

As if the Gates of Heaven let you in

The gateman grinning, charmed and bent off-course

With cheap, sweet bribery of orange sin.

Resisting, this fair woman, longs to taste

Whose brush with death, resuscitates my soul

Reminding of the folly to make haste ‒

Instead embracing bliss should be my goal

These spheres invade my dreams and waking thought

With all the times and places I’d devour

I’m tortured from refusing them, once bought

Ignoring their sweet centre, hour by hour

And thus I’ve learnt to never turn away;

In sweet surrender, FruChocs, make my day!

Editor’s note: Loved and enjoyed since their creation in 1948 to utilise excess dried fruit from South Australia’s Riverland and Barossa Valley, FruChocs were added to the official South Australian Heritage Icons list in 2005.

Kim Findlay holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from UniSA and a Masters in International and Community Development from Deakin University. In 2011 she and her husband Dr Michael Findlay co-founded Maranatha Health, a not-for-profit organisation and Children’s Hospital in Uganda, that she continues to support from afar. Now living in the Adelaide Hills with her growing family, Kim still finds time for bushland hiking, and the writing of creative non-fiction and poetry, the latter via her voice recorder as she hikes.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.