by Laura Reece Hogan
I cradled it on the gentian blue lip
of the mug, resting my eyes on brightness.
Still bearing the grocery sticker: “navel”
and “buy me.” I want to
shift this glint of seeing, no headache,
no throb, only the thrum of neon yellow
sunrise, winking through citrus leaves
in the garden, tangerine and clementine
trees weighed with radiant suns
ripened by the punishing season. This garden
is portable; I call it up against the blue.
Here is the surprise of ladybugs, red
in diaphanous boldness. Rainbows of hummingbirds,
beehives of slow gold under the rock.
A razor trill of crickets I can count on. Every grit-
knobbed antenna tuning (not to fear)
(not to peril) (not to terror) pricking to the report
of potential of positive of yes of vision
of sunbeam opening the branches of the barbed
recesses,
bathing all in the orange of a question, a question
of fire and sweetness.
::
Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Butterfly Nebula (Backwaters, University of Nebraska Press, 2023), winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), winner of the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press), and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock). She is one of ten poets featured in the anthology In a Strange Land (Cascade Books). Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Smartish Pace, Sugar House Review, Scientific American, RHINO, Connecticut River Review, America, Verse Daily and elsewhere. www.laurareecehogan.com
Image: Jefrey Fernandez
ID: oranges in a red plastic bag.
Psaltery & Lyre 
Wonderful poem!