Poets Salon: The Scent of Orange

POETS SALON

– 3/27/19

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

My mother slept through her two days and nights of residence. She, whose eager eyes were always open. She’d visited her son’s plaque on the hospice wall. Her last resort. But did she ever know in the end she was here?

Serenity House
scent of orange blossoms
in her hair

~ Kathabela

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Friendship (Photo – Alicia Viguer-Espert)

Alicia Viguer-Espert

Oranges, brought by the Arabs from China & India, have been cultivated in Valencia for centuries and therefore, there is a long-standing tradition in appreciating this fruit. Even as kids, if the temperature descended below freezing, we were all worried about citric damage. It didn’t matter that our parents did not own any orchards, the concern was collective. During my infancy, Valencia was still a small city surrounded by orange groves all the way to the sea, and in early May, when the windows remained open because of the warmer weather, one could get drunk with the orange blooms perfume. We found it intoxicating. When my father took us to my uncle’s orchards we rolled the car windows down questioning each other about the intensity of the fragrance, but it was at night when the blossoms exuded its sweetest poison that we wrote poetry.

Today I stood under an orange tree canopy

stretched my neck to touch the soft whiteness
until the small jewels crowned my head.

This is me, I told myself, crib, wedding bouquet,
funerary garland, if permitted, remembering
those clear May days when we opened the East
windows to gaze at the bluest brush of the horizon and
were swept by perfume belonging to the gods and us.

The whole city turned into a perfumer’s laboratory,
inhaling deeply lungs explored cosmic dimensions.
Out in the orchards we rolled the car windows down
asking each other, “can you smell it,?” possessed
by irrational laughter, longing for golden spheres.

I continue the ritual, undressing myself into the spiral
of a pumpkin-colored-suit falling into a plate, give away
juicy portions of myself, like the ones I fed my friend
the day before she passed away, contented, gratefully.
Seeds and white teguments I offer to smaller beings.

Though the sheltering tree is a Californian transplant,
and I can’t see the Mediterranean from my window,
I promenade the neighborhood breathing freely,
recollection neurons activated, sections of heart
ready to give to anyone to preserve the memory.

Alicia has recently lost a most wonderful friend. She was a lit candle lighting not only Alicia’s candle-life but many others. Holding to gratitude for the love received though acknowledging the enormous loss is now her project and challenge.

Revenge

Knives can’t slice it
because of its age,
skin already detaching
from the sectional flesh.

Couldn’t turn it into the spiral
of the Orangina commercial,
so you drag the knife over
the cork-like cells,
almost as a scalpel, then
sink the nails under the skin.

There is some satisfaction
at separating its parts,
isolating, utilizing
the life of this orange,
peel it, squeeze it, bite it.

When it’s all over you marvel
at the sweet perfume
permeating your hands.

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Oranges (Photo – Marietta McGregor)

Marietta McGregor

Lullaby in orange and gold

When I lived with her as a young girl, each evening before bedtime aunt Lill would slice an orange into neat segments on a fine china plate and bring it to me with the National Geographic Magazine. Her grey hair rolled into a hairnet ready for sleep, she would say goodnight and kiss me with soft old lips. Six and a half decades later when I open a new yellow-bordered issue, I remember the sweet tang of citrus and the warmth of love.

winter marmalade
a coppery sheen
on her old jam pan

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Mexican orange
the purple defence
of a butterfly

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new young love
one more dash of Cointreau
in her soufflé

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orange grove
an avenue
of bee hum

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Orange peel (Photo – Alicia Viguer-Espert)

Sigrid Saradunn

fresh squeezed orange juice

it was the norm growing up
helping Mother squeeze the orange juice

essence of orange on our hands
getting every drop of juice to share
sunshine in every sip

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Oranges (Photo- Alicia Viguer-Espert)

Ingrid Reuper

Once an orange tree
sweetly smelled in front of
my wide opened window
fragrant blossoms and fruits
ripening all together

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Scent of Orange by Rick Wilson

The Scent of Orange: Quotes and Credits

Alicia Viguer-Espert was born in Valencia, Spain. Her family settled in the city exactly in 1238, when the king of Aragón James I, conquered it from the Arab king. She now lives in Mount Washington, Los Angeles, where she enjoys the company of several groups of poetry-loving friends.

Marietta McGregor, in Canberra, Australia, is a poet/writer and botanist who has been widely published in international journals and has won awards for haiku, haibun and haiga. She grows citrus in tubs in her home garden, both for their flowers’ seductive scent, and as a butterfly haven.

Sigrid Sarudunn now lives in Bangor, Maine. She grew up in Northern Wisconsin. She says: “Orange juice was a seasonal treat and the vision of oranges growing on a tree in our back yard beyond our imagination.”

Ingrid Reuper is living in Germany near Hannover. She says: “Here, there are no orange trees, it’s too cold. I smelled them at Tenerife, where my parents lived.”

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♣ We welcome and encourage your response, especially in the form of a short poem, by leaving a comment below.