Driving along, I listened as Campbell McGrath read his poems on NPR. I don't love his work, but I like it. He presented to me a new Florida. A strange, wondrous, and exploited land. He writes of a Florida worth exploring, worth writing about, worth blogging about.
"The Orange"
An Excerpt from Florida Poems
By Campbell McGrath
Gone to swim after walking the boys to school.
Overcast morning, midweek, off-season,
few souls to brave the warm, storm-tossed waves,
not wild but rough for this tranquil coast.
Swimming now. In rhythm, arm over arm,
let the ocean buoy the body and the legs work little,
wave overhead, crash and roll with it, breathe,
stretch and build, windmill, climb the foam. Breath,
breath. Traveling downwind I make good time
and spot the marker by which I know to halt
and forge my way ashore. Who am I
to question the current? Surely this is peace abiding.
Walking back along the beach I mark the signs of erosion,
bide the usual flotsam of seagrass and fan coral,
a float from somebody's fishing boat,
crusted with sponge and barnacles, and then I find
the orange. Single irradiant sphere on the sand,
tide-washed, glistening as if new born,
golden orb, miraculous ur-fruit,
in all that sweep of horizon the only point of color.
Cross-legged on my town I let the juice course
and mingle with the film of salt on my lips
and the sand in my beard as I steadily peel and eat it.
Considering the ancient lineage of this fruit,
the long history of its dispersal around the globe
on currents of animal and human migration,
and in light of the importance of the citrus industry
to the state of Florida, I will not claim
it was the best and sweetest orange in the world,
though it was, o great salt water
of eternity,
o strange and bountiful orchard.
Click to hear Campbell McGrath read excerpts from this poem and others.
