Navel Oranges, Neighbours

I brave your name in the mornings,
jumping into the primers and the windowsills
with my own unwarranted point of view.
This house has secret passageways, luxurious
and earthy behind curtains of myrrh-dark silk,
and my eyelashes are corn-tassels.

In the summer, weevils and raccoons tussled
in the cornfields, and your skin melted in the sun.
In the barn, your wrist where it was not tanned
slipped from it's flannel cocoon like a cob of corn
from leaves. Or perhaps you were peeled free,
dancing with the dust where the barnwood
cracked and betrayed your ankles.

And now, we drink orange juice in the morning,
laughing as we mutilate the tree in the backyard.
Our eyes spin together like records, wreckers with our
untanned wrists braced against the juicer.
The neighbours peer in at our impertinent talk,
and flowers called weeds crinkle up at the
edges of the steps: lady's thumb, violets, butter-and-eggs,
lazily laughing at the neighbours with us,
waiting in the shade for navel oranges to fall.