The Orange Grove Behind Our House

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

A grove can take us anywhere.  The leaves

Shine distances:  blood’s pirates that we play

Are in the Caribbean*.  Vision cleaves

Us with them.  Sparkle’s waters are the bay

Where Bluebeard’s masts and sails and pistols, swords

And bullion live now for the boys whose minds

Are conjuring kids’ fun.  We walk the boards

Of captured sail boats.  Cruel cloth now binds

The eyes of victims as they wait to walk

The plank to playful death.  We swagger as

We shout commands.  On shore the Indians stalk

Us, but we triumph, veins filled up with jazz.

  The fruits become our cannonballs.  We fire

     Them at our cousins.  Bumbling they expire.

*Yes, this word is pronounced correctly two different ways.  Here it is pronounced CāRibbean.

© Phillip Whidden