God gave me a blood orange.
He stamped my hands with Hebrew letters.
It can take time for this to fruit in the physical.
I swallowed another shadow last night.
It wore burlap for a veil and tried convincing me it
was an Angel.
I half believed it until I caught it pouring
agent orange about the rose bushes by the driveway.
I could not abide by that -
so i swallowed it.

In my dreams I swim inside an orange grove
(somewhere near the south end of the Salinas Valley, California.)
The migrant farm hands file along the rows with
wicker baskets full of dried rose petals;
Hebrew lettering stamped across their hands.

I thought I heard the lambs and the horses screaming,
but in actuality it was the burlap angels
fleeing for their life as Hannibal the Great marched  
across the Alps with war elephants and wailing trumpets
and saddlebags full of sharpening stones.
I peeled open a blood orange,
fruit from the womb of the World Mother.
I saved and dried the rinds as
I thanked the Most High for the bounty.