Pyres And Oranges And Songs

I have been meaning to write about oranges for a while now, and by that I mean

I think of you when I hold them

How we are really just people, hungry for sweet things and love

I don’t have a huge orange, like Wendy Cope

I have tiny ones, and I peel them each for you

In the search of other sweet and lovely things I realize I’m still a little sad, always

It is not yet winter and all the leaves are turning

Beautiful and indifferent

And this song I’m listening to, I learned at a funeral

I sing it sometimes, I’ve told you the story

Someone else’s guitar in a barn in the middle of nowhere

I can still smell the wooden walls and the pyre laid, burning for days as we celebrated

Not the absence of the life but the life itself

And we cried

Soon I will have wings engraved in me

Like she did, gone before her time

And the sweet and the lovely and the grieving things will be combined

As they always have been, the same glimmering thread

Pyres and oranges and songs