There are Rivers of Oranges

 James Tipton

 

There are rivers of oranges, sweet

like the autumn sun, sweet

like sand on the doubloon

found at the bottom of sleep,

like the sweet stars we delicately peel,

like the roots of acorn squash,

like the eyes of the jaguars in Peru.

 

When we deeply imagine

we no longer imagine at all,

but dive, at last, naked and alive,

into the flesh of oranges, into

the steaming jungle, into words

that hang like orange rain,

like love just before it happens.

 

It is everything we ever wanted

to remember, like empty orange

file folders labeled “Careers,” like

the lover who walks backwards

through every shift of love until

he arrives home, to the place

where what is seen inside is what is.

 

There the orange mind bursts

like a village of chrysanthemums

gone mad, or gathered together

for mass, praising

the orange hands of God, praising

the saffron eyes of the flower saints,

praising the hearts in the tiny seeds.

 

[This poem is from Letters from a Stranger, by James Tipton (Conundrum Press, 1998)]       

  


James Tipton lives in Chapala, in the tropical mountains of southern Mexico, where he writes poetry and enjoys village life.  His work is widely published, including credits in The Nation, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Greensboro Review, Esquire, Field, International Poetry Review, Christian Science Monitor, Mountain Gazette, American Literary Review, El Ojo del Lago, Lake Chapala Review, Living at Lake Chapala, and Mexico Connect.   His most recent collection of poems, Letters from a Stranger, with a Foreword by Isabel Allende (Conundrum Press, 1998), won the 1999 Colorado Book Award in Poetry.  

 

 

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