{ Howard Miller: Blood Orange. }

[delga]

Blood Orange
by Howard Miller

As the spasms fade and salt
dries, you fold, withdrawing,
into yourself, a consumed
blood orange restored
in a film reversed;
tongue-caressing juices flow,
return into bruised segments
which rise and swing together
to a sphere again, a world
of flesh closed and complete.
You shrug back into
the malleable skin, then reattach
yourself to the swaying branch,
among but not of the others,
absorbed by the surge of your
own ripening until the sun
presses so deeply into your center
the need to spill sweet light
opens you once more.