Winter’s Tale - Maxine Kumin

[Larry Robinson]

Winter’s Tale 

Even from my study at the back 
of the house I can hear an orange drop 
upstairs, one of the last to grow 

on the dwarf tree you bought me 
thirty years ago. When it tried 
to overtake the window frame 

we cruelly lopped side branches and still 
it blossomed and bore its bitter progeny 
the size and wrinkle of walnuts. 

Repotting, we tore the roots apart, 
vermiculite clinging like hatchlings 
of silverfish to its tendrils. It thrived, 

for years you harvested a pint or more. 
But as it aged the fruitage thinned 
and hoping to replace it, you soaked 

handfuls of seeds. Three consented to sprout. 
They shot straight up like pole beans, 
greedy underlings sucking in 

all the light at the front of the house. 
Of course they were sterile. 
Today, when I hear an orange drop 

I don’t let myself think back to the winters  
when you’d pick a crop of twenty, thirty 
oranges at once, cut each 

one open, force the seeds out, add 
enough sugar to make my teeth ache, 
and boil and boil until the mass 

congealed, sheeting off the spoon 
in the drear of February while rain 
fell on snow, making little pockmarks 

like mattress buttons in the pasture 
outside the steamy kitchen window, 
and life was bleak and sweet and you 

made marmalade

	- Maxine Kumin