Orange Season

She hung fat on a citrus tree, sprouting like a hip jut, like the tall grass and itch weed. The sweating sun drunk her up and splaid ‘er bare, sliced her clean open before the pecking birds could close in. An orchard is a sea side, so if the ships could, they would swashbuckle the great ocean of trees and lick the seafoam of blossoms that sprayed upon their greedy lips. Instead their rusted Volkswagens watch at bay from the back roads. The pickup trucks mouth the days till the ripe time. Young navel, that oil green coat doesn’t fit like it used to, and summer’s the kinda lover who licks at your skin. So when the men come with the topaz winds, with their sunken buckets and gall, should it be you who dip into the wharf of their palm? Should it be you who bows down, who twirls for those brutes who like them too soft, too soon? An orchard is a seaside, stretched thinner than the thick of here. So when you begin to seep, to wrinkle and prune. When you, filled with your many months fall at the Earth’s hip, amongst the tall grass and itch weed. Will they not see your beauty then, Is the fruit not sweetest rotten?