My Desire for Oranges

Rolling an orange from one hand to the other

finds me in the mind of the Orange Grower.

There is pleasure in a bowl of oranges.

Cezanne cannot be wrong.

A painterly bassinette…   A nursery of rounded sighs…

The hand feels good holding an orange,

and the palm is satisfied.

Mounded like extra luggage in the bin,

oranges are loud, commonplace salespersons,

all heavy and handsome and of sunny dispositions…

undiapered as bawdy jokes.

These enlargements around pinched navels

are a hale shout from among the vegetables.

Glowing with well-being, heavy with flavor,

they freely accept being popular.

These energetic oranges!  This mound of exuberance!

dimpled and indented in a youngster’s planted stance.

These placeholders – one of nature’s trillions –

herded like hoboes, raised like soldiers,

remind me of youth’s proud insouciance

clambering to mount the ramparts.

                                         – by Carl Nelson

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