Seduction in the Orange Groves

In rows of citrus trees the workers tend
My fam’ly’s enterprise a century.
Among Valencia where I would fend,
And since I came of age they all could see—

The girl-turned-woman child is like an orange,
With flesh as smooth & scented of its bloom.
Don’t ever taste the skin of burnished orb;
Must leave the tree, deny of its perfume.

They also knew the foreman had his sight
To pluck the succulent from off the tree.
He could not reckon such a dare would bite,
How willingly to tempt the Fates was he.

Yet to his nerve & swagger I was drawn
In spite the station of my pedigree.
And so it was one day at break of dawn
We met beneath the tree he knew I’d be.

The heavy-lidded eyes’ belie intent,
My efforts hew much closer to the source.
To find his poverty from words’ infest,
Lest oft’ I may betray a truer course.

It cannot liken to his wax & wane,
Of what is ripe in needful harvest tryst.
In twilight chill, the smudge pots in the rain,
Their hazy smoke come morning’s early mist.

Seduction in the orange groves was our vex,
We could not stay apart thru’ all of Spring.
His craving me, my lusting for his sex,
With summer’s mercury what would it bring.

But now the fledgling season autumn’s nigh,
And gone the torrid heat of summer’s flaunt.
With changing colors in a deeper sky,
To stroke the raging tempest of our want.

Thru’ fields & groves so far & stretched so vast
Can hardly touch the view of mountain rim.
The remnants of the snow two seasons past,
But never do I see for want of him.

I cross a row of trees, their heavy slough.
My flowing skirt I lift that billows high
To catch what breezes loosen in their blow,
To merge the whisper ‘twixt the damp & dry.

Then sudden are his loins against my stress,
The shrieks of struggle in a cloud of dust.
A muffled crush of leaves, my body’s press
While curl of hands & toes, the rippled lust

His fingers thick with clay dig thru’ my hair
To pull me to a trough and roll me in.
He sheds his grubby clothes to join me there,
To wash away the grime but not the sin.

There is no sin of harvest from the dirt,
The blessing of the oranges, of their worth.
To splay apart the segments as they squirt,
And give release like manna to the earth.




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