Shouldn't…but Do

There’s a banana peel out on the North Forty, next to the street. It had been perched atop a snowbank for some time before I introduced myself.

I could have collected it for the trash can, and my property might have looked less like a compost pile – but consider – what is a banana peel doing on a snowbank? Drive-by toss? Garbage truck escapee? The incongruency of a tropical peel astride a snowbank piqued my interest, much as roadside attractions do.

Each day I walked by and nodded, a perfectly cordial peel.

As the snow melted, the peel lost altitude, and the day after it rained, with no snowbank to cushion it, it sprawled on the flattened, brown grass.

Two days ago, decidedly brown, yesterday, almost rancid, its cheerful yellow coat replaced by mush. The benefits of refrigeration.

Things last longer when chilled. Get a little warm? True colors show, decomposition holds sway, for the worse, and eventually for the better.

If the object of life is to cling to what looks good, chill may win out. But even now, in changed, blackened form, beginning mucousal slide toward the storm drain, that mush has a rich journey into disintegration, eventually becoming fertile organic detritus. That says a lot more than that perky peel ever did.