The Third Tangerine                                           


            It was nothing I could put my finger on
            Which made it worse
            But didn’t shake my certainty

            The sea, I told myself,
            Doesn’t need to justify a wave

            We lunched
            Wordlessly on the shore

            The gulls called out
            Occasionally a breeze disturbed the sand

            I kept my as-if eyes ahead
            Searching the horizon for a sign

            No matter how the clouds congealed
            Or dissipated in the distance
            My tongue was cloven

            When she passed the tangerine –
            Our third –
            I took a mortifying age to peel it

            The small segmented globe
            Sat in the palm of my right hand
            Like the kind of sponge-ball
            I used to pitch 

            I thought about those days
            Of earnest trickery and boredom
            Before the world got complicated –
            When all I needed was to throw
            A strike against the wall,
            To fool the batter with a curve
            And nick the corner of the plate
            We’d drawn in chalk –
            And everything depended on the outcome
            Of a game on summer nights

            The only one in sight
            Saw that I had crushed
            The fruit before I felt
            The juice

            She kept her peace and 
            Spared me
            Explanations


            ________________________________________________________________________


            Emanuel E. García, Wandering Bark2013