Smudging is the term used for lighting small oil fires in the orange groves at night when the temperatures are too low, to keep the leaves and fruit warm, so as not to lose the crop.
I come out of a California orange grove
the way a meteor might be
plucked out of an Arizona desert. The icy origins
of genes
could easily be
flaming ones
And in my head
those red-hot rocks
shake down into a bed of
coals, oranges roll off the shelves,
amber sticks on the roof of my mouth,
honey glistens in glass jars, the combs full of music,
-all in the back of my head / the gold
of the small loops in my ears
is the sound of a king cobra crossing the rocks,
tigers walk across my lips / the gold is
in my head It is the honeysuckle of an island.
This gold is in your house;
I sleep in your bed at night
and love you,
but the firelight from those smudging pots
flickers against my eyes, burned by the eclipse this year,
and reminds me:
When I was five years old, we lived on the edge
of Orange County, in an orange grove, in a
small two room house with a sagging screened
porch. Outside the kitchen at night when it
was near frosting, the immigrant laborers
would build fires in the smudge pots to keep
the trees from freezing. The poetry of dew
points would be on the news each night, and
after we went to bed, the Alickering of these
fires would embroider the windows, and the
sounds of voices talking in Spanish and laugh
ing over their tequila bottles would wander
into the windows like the turning lawn sprin
klers. Our doors had locks that opened with
skeleton keys. You could purchase them in
dime stores. The flimsy jambs and lintels could
have been pushed down by children, and my
mother was not at all secure in her plain white
ness. Those voices frightened her. My father
was never home. I was a child with a father
who was a sailor and a child who did not even
know what a fishing rod looked like. My
mother stood up in agony, all night, in the dark
every night there was smudging and the Chi
canos were sitting on our steps laughing,
drinking, or under the kitchen window,
talking.
Orange groves in California
are the boundaries
of my childhood.
Nights
when the temperatures hovered
near the mouth of frost
on the thermometer /
pots of glowing oil
tended by dark Mexicans
on dark nights
in the dark rows of the dark-leaved trees. Each orange shining
like a cold sour gold anger,
on the bushy tough arms
of the tree.
I remember those hard knots
of light
that turned into the fruit
for dew-soaked breakfasts.
But it was the smudge-pots
burning
like old lamps in a dim room,
warming the trees
glowing in the orchards
as I passed on asphalt hi-ways
unable to talk
that reminded me
of my own unripe sour tight
globular fruit
hopefully ripening,
hopefully not killed off
by a frost,
Even now,
my leaves like toes
reach out
for warmth. Cold
nights and city
streets
have no glowing smudge pots
to leave traces
of soot
on the leaves and golden finally-ripe
oranges.
You are
the man with big hands,
the man whose brain
numbers every piece of hardware,
and who knows how to use any tool. A mechanic
you always come home dirty,
as if some flame had
been smudging you,
keeping your tender leaves from
low temperatures,
and I who grew up in a little house
frightened of soot and angry
at the voices of men in the night,
long for you
with all the mystery of my childhood
You threw me out once
for a whole year,
and I felt that all the masculinity I knew about was gone:
saw blades humming through stiff wood,
the hand that threaded wire into place and made light,
the soaking parts of motorcycles and cars which
were sloshed free of old dirt and put meticulously back
into now running
machines,
the hands and mind which could fix the shower
or the furnace if either
didn’t work
That year
I sought sunshine,
looked for men who could work in a foundry, w
ho were not afraid to touch hot metal.
And I was the orange
who began to love the dark groves at night,
the dewy shake of the leaves,
and who believed these burnings in the night
were part of a ritual
that might someday be understood.
And from the little girl who read fairy tales,
I have grown into the woman
in them, the one who steps magically out
of those fragrant orange peels,
into your house,
next to your side. I sort your dirty smudged work-clothes
for the laundromat and long for the sun.
You are the voices in those dark nights, laughing on the front steps
into that clear fiery tequila;
and always there will be part of the child shivering in me
inside, knowing my mother feared something
that I must also fear,
her husband who left her alone for the salty ocean.
My father who walked away from me;
and then there is the part of me, that golden fruit growing on
the orange tree outside in the orchard,
searching for the warmth of the smudge pot,
and it is that part of me that takes your hand confidently
as we walk down the street and listens to your deep voice telling
stories.
Thank god for our visions.
That in our heads
we play many roles. There is part of me that trembles,
and part of me that reaches for warmth,
and part of me that breaks open
like mythic fruit,
the golden orange every prince will fight
to own.
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