I woke this morning thinking about the orange, and how oranges are abundantly stacked in the supermarket for us. I chose to imagine what it would be like to have only one a year.
The
Today I am going to choose an orange,
sit down and cut it open
as though it arrived in the toe of my Christmas stocking,
one day a year.
For some, it was the only gift
and it was enough, that orange treasured
in the stocking hung with care, arriving
as a harbinger of winter cheer.
When I bite in, juice squirts,
sweet, not like a star burst
but true to the tree it came from,
the soil, the leaves.
It says, “Taste my home, the flesh
of then and now moved here for you
to tighten your gums
and give you something to chew.”
I move in, as though to hunt,
and capture this
to come to my home
and journey through me, digest a change of form.
the day still indeterminate as to clear or gray
a moment of not knowing -
a chance to play -
for me, I make it prehistory
and exit from my cave.
