Good Company [by Sally Ashton]

One thing I enjoy about guest blogging here at BAP is the company I get to keep for a week. I also enjoy the surprising synchronicity that often occurs between posts, the happy associations of ideas, themes and perspectives that  seem to gather resonance as they collect. I am a collagist at heart. I love the art of  fragment.

I'm offering a closing poem here that seems to bring a few ideas from the week together, a familiar poem and one from the west coast where my fragmentation dwells. It has to do with food, and I have sooo enjoyed BAP's new "cooking with the poets" feature. It has to do with winter, a December poem, and it speaks something into what the best hopes of this season express. It also includes an orange, which I think is the state fruit of Florida (?), and Lauren Wolfe just posted a tropical Menorah from Florida. There you have it.

One more item from the west before I type in Gary Soto's fine poem, something new, exciting and worth adding to your links, is the International Poetry Library San Francisco, a dynamic project founded in 2008 by educator, poet and editor Kimberly Mahler. The concept, modeled after both Poets House, NYC, and the Poetry Library, London, seeks to create a major poetry resource on the west coast as well as represent the work of significant international poets. Though still in the development stage, collections are already being formed and cataloged. You can join them on Facebook to keep up with their progress.

There's a lot of orange in the picture, don't you think?

Oranges by Gary Soto

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn’t say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

(from New and Selected Poems)

Best wishes all-- Sally.

Comments

[DL]

And we love the company we keep!