Welcome Shade

Yellow heat and blue sky
Make green of the river
And a breeze on the bank
Is the sweet breath of a mother
On what was nearly a scald

From the bald weight of sun
Sweat rises gleaming
Like a computered outline
Or a faint, old fashioned ghost

Or still more historic
The bloody wet pelt
Of some martyred saint

Or just an earthier hand
Damp slapping your back.

They melt - Sevillianos - at two
As they never grew up
Where July has a why?
But now just like them
I can walk from Sierpes
Without feeling the sun
In cool streams of shadow
To Amor de Dios.

Youth is a tourist
Heat seeking, beach splayed
Little thinking one day
That the flesh, heart and mind
Might welcome the shade

Orange Trees in January

Livid orange
In an oil leaf green
Against a sky less
Vivid, but still clean
Iridiscant: Ripened by the cold
Born from blue.

A less inspired hue
The branch and trunk
More elephant grey
Too wrinkeled,
Crokked, hoar
To be lovely alone
It must wait, leave room
Like sun-burning stone
For beauty's bloom.

January
And the flames ignite
In lines of trees
When you were thinkingnight.

The fruit of winter Is a fruit indeed.

Orange in winter Is love in need.