Out of the quiet, someone.
            No, two someones.

Two oranges presiding on the sill.
            Phone goes. Friends ill.

But we were just now thinking how the maple on the hill
            held still, remember? And held the wind inside it—

The mind is a sieve. Things drain. Or won’t.
            No that’s the body. No that’s the mind.

Insanity. Cancer.
            Soup. Here—.

Something in them could be maple-red? Well.
            And boot-heel red, as the boot is lifted

from the face, mind’s
            body-meal revealed—

Rhyme, old refuge.
            Time, old appeal.

Orzo. Orzo. Ergo,
            tomato.

A second nurse must also check for blood in the tubing.
            Liability’s red. No, green.

Inside, the oranges must be made of china.
            Or we could put our fingers through. All the way to China.

Put it on the calendar.
            Pumpkin treatment. Leek.

Everyone says the right thing.
            Grinds their teeth in sleep.

What grinds words to salve?
            Her son designs things hospitals have.

Don’t talk about language.
            The primary tool is soup.

Oranges pocked with doubt
            but ringed with warm blue fur.

What makes wildness safe?
            Quick-draw blood-draw thing.

Sun, like an orange above us...
            And parasols smeared with lace...

Never again mock oranges.
            Seventeen days withdrawal from mock oranges.

“In my dream I took the old mind of one
            and the young body of—”
.
Wildness is chemical.
            Wildness is treatable.

“In my dream I gave them the oranges,
            for scurvy—”

Wilderness is beatable.
            Wildebeest is eatable.

One unbearably old looking.  One just unbearable.
            To themselves.

Neither one can sleep so they both have access
            to the magic hours.  Rabbits, rabid...

Mulligatawny. Reheat the Fibonacci-Fern.
            Plain Ole Carrot.  Fish (burned).

Their wildnesses must be so
            disappointed.

Orange seed-size
            word for it.

Two sets of teeth clacker down the stairs.
            Stop. Eat.

The primary tool is soup.
            Getting hard to touch them with our hands like shining ladles.

Email travels like blood.
            Yes. They’re alive.

Oranges on the other hand. Matter
            of interpretation.  Soup on the other hand.

One is going to the forest to be healed.
            Wild mushroom with wild turnip dice.

One is bound in the forest of her house.
            Chicken and rice and everything nice.

The primary tool is soup. The primary tool is soup.
            Mercy tastes like iron.  The primary tool is soup.

From Horizon Note (Wisconsin University Press, 2001).