Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón

A Trick of the Light

. . .
Now, there are no oranges at all in the whole
of San Fernando Valley, no oranges, just names

of streets: Orange Boulevard, Orange County.
The way we do. Naming what's no longer there.

Here was an orange grove; here was a brown boy.
I bow down, in my suit of hand-me-down spikes,

into the coop where the warm fowl slept against him.
The hens do not love him. Neither do the oranges.

But they survive together: fuel for the future:

A picture of a feather without the bird,
A picture of an orange without the tree,
A picture of a shadow without a boy.

Day 15: #TheSealeyChallenge