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Drawn Back by Oranges


02.10.13 Posted in today's words by

Kalima Hamilton wrote this beautiful poem. She is the author of Outside the Lava Fields (Aldrich Press 2012). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming at Prairie Schooner, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and Shenandoah.

Drawn Back by Oranges

By Kalima Hamilton

Late March and the faithful swallows return
to San Juan Capistrano;

in ones and twos they flock
around the feet of the Fathers,

some indelible code impelling
them back,
back to the mission with its Spanish archways,
the beautiful fountains.

It’s about knowing who feeds you,
pecking at sunflower seeds &
feeling
the warm orange-thick California air–

you return again & again
(a ritual of clockwork),
to bougainvillea draping the adobe,

this iced pink promise
of Mexican primrose pushing up

through cracks in the sunlit sidewalk.



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