Oranges
Every summer, oranges grew like heartbeats:
my father went to the grave of his sister
and my mother picked them from the trees.
Mornings and nights were peeled from their days
and every day seemed a Sunday, a few fruit bathed
in cold water to slow their ripening.
Occasionally, with the oranges unwatched,
we would steal them early from the water –
our hands dripping across the kitchen floor.
The juice went sticky and stained our hands
till we soaked in the basin water at evening,
when the sun is a fruit on its lowest branch.
On those evenings, my father would sit
in the orchard after every fruit had fallen
and watch them change to molten shades.
Joseph Davison-Duddles is seventeen and lives in the north of England. This year he was a winner in the Foyle Young Poets competition, commended in the Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets, and came second-place in a Lancaster Writing Award. His hobbies include untidiness and political disappointment. His poems can be found in Ambit, Cadaverine, and Prole magazines.