When you are young, all is skin and juice: You carry your basket to bed, brimming overflow of firmness, rounded to golden delicious curves, shining summer sheets, tangled in tangerine, a plumpearpeach dive, citrus skimming, thirsting for lemon, for lime, for the feel of skin. I am ripe, you think, all fruit sassy, fresh, ready to jump, spring into into the not-so-still-life of Erica-Jonged verse, penned in orange-mango-ed lines, running off the unmade bed, coursing down the hall. But soon, the quick-turn of nectar, seeps into the grooves, of life, of garden, to the place you find yourself, when you are of a certain age, sifting through soil, no longer distracted, by the dangle of fruit, unearthing the dusky weight of rich russet, ponderous yam, this harvest of irregular shapes, deep, yielding. You carry your brown bag to bed, rustic offerings, earth-echoed, your hands lifelined to all things rooted, muted tenderness, many-eyed, skinned, vulnerable stew of strength, this winter mix of finger shadowed love, here on time’s bed, here, still burning orange, this yam-halved sunset, this red - rooted sky.