Another departure from nutrition on this day dedicated to the letter O.  April is National Poetry Month. 

Great Grandfather’s Name

The warmth of orange, the rich shades of color

Taken from the sun, from reds and browns and yellows

And transferred to a child to be his name

What could his parents have wished that name would inspire

 

Could it have been a name from the land

That of an earl or duke from France

And why would that land be named orange

And why would the child inherit the name

 

Did the land in France, or some other faraway land

Grow the fruit, the tree named orange that takes

Color from the sun and the earth and makes that

Perfect, round fruit which shares name with the child

 

The child became a husband, a father, a grandfather

Who had children sit on his lap and wonder at

His beard, and the lingering smell not of orange

But of onion, the poultice for his maladies

 

Orange and onion, memories meld together

The family stories and the continuing wonder

Of why, and would he want to be remembered

For more, and doubtless he was but always

Also for the name, Orange Scott Warner.

©2016