What a zest ! (Ron Wallace)

= Absolutely love this piece written by Ron Wallace. =
"I remember saying a little prayer, to God or the muse or my subconscious or whatever was generating the poem, to let me finish it. Just then my wife walked in downstairs and my heart sank. Would she interrupt me? Would I lose the poem? But what happened instead was that SHE WALKED INTO THE POEM."

ORANGES

This morning I eat an orange.
It is sour and juicy. My mouth
will tingle all day.
Outside, it is cold. The trees
do not anticipate their leaves.
When I breathe into my hand I smell
oranges.

I walk across the lake.
Ice fishermen twitch their poles until
perch flicker the surface, quick
and bright as orange slices.
The sun ripens in the sky.
The wind turns thin and citrus,
the day precise, fragile.

My mustache and eyelashes freeze.
When I arrive at your house
you are friendly as a fruit seller.
We peel off our clothes, slice through
that wordy rind.
When I lift my fingers to your lips:
oranges.
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"As I was closing the poem I was thinking more of tactile and olfactory than of visual imagery -- the touch, the smell, of oranges on the lips. It wasn't until a reader later pointed out the visual image of the ending -- lips look like orange slices -- that I saw that element of the poem."
= Lips like orange slices ...... beautiful! =