The Oranges: A Poem

So many, mock me in their ripening,
Their abundance – singly, in clusters
Of twos and threes – bold as nothing
Else to see, their globes of colour
Assertions of coming juice and flesh
Peeled in sweet refreshment. And this
Fecundity no more than the given outcome
Of species, earth and air in seasonality.

And while these plump within their skins,
To the north, at the foot of the garden,
The thinning leaves of the maple tree
Drift to ground – shivering in loosening,
In their fall, and – lit in momentary
Sunlight – as bright a yellow, orange,
As the fruit, before dull brown loss
In growing piles amid thick, wet grass:

It is the oranges that hurt, hanging and
Glowing in admonishment, loud avowal
Of waste, insufficiency, nonfulfillment,
In my own workings, my achievement:
In what soils are my roots watered? What
Benefit of light, what nourishment gleaned
From air, but the given to, the taken by,
This growth in its luxuriance, its decay?

I have fed from the least of sustenance,
On the available obvious, as if I too
Were fixed in earth, mere mechanism
Of materiality, of growing: and all the time
In my reach has been another succour,
Elemental to my becoming, to my being,
Through which – though fruit, leaves,
Trees decay – there is no living wastage.

Print