Resurrection Oranges

One of my quiet joys in this cacophonous world is receiving Image Journal in the mail. It's one of those things that is infrequent enough -- quarterly -- that I forget about it until I discover the surprise at the mailbox. Then I sit down and am ushered inward and upward as artists, writers, and poets contemplate life and faith.

In the issue I just received I enjoyed the following poem by Irish poet Eamon Grennan. I thought it was fitting to share given my post on resurrection tomatoes.


Resurrection Oranges
Eamon Grennan

Shouldering the late snow aside, the snowdrops and tight
green fists of skunk cabbage thrust up and up. Likewise
nameless threads of pale green, each with a tiny leaf-cap,
have started to shine all over the dark-drenched mulch

of dead leaves. Transparencies of air! In which the world
starts happening, taking shape from almost nothing (nothing,
and just look at us!), and how light, that is a cataract of quiet
astonishment through the dining-room window, Cezannes

a bowl of fruit before our eyes: green pears and pale red
yellow-speckled apples, oranges lit like lamps in their own
sanctuary, all take a sudden swerve (nature mort as they are)

into resurrection, it seems that easy, so even the word
home, a fugitive bluebird, closes its wings and settles like
a native come to roost, to ripen, quiet, in one sunlit corner.