Poetry by Cecil Morris
The dwarf mandarin in the back yard is
so loaded with fruit it is more orange
than green, more fruit than tree, more and more,
an abundance beyond all eating
of our reduced family, children gone
to their own lives. We eat 8 or more
a day. We fill bags for neighbors right
and left and across the street, and still
fruit remains, grows soft, falls to the ground,
and rots, wasted. This lone tree presents
a bounty too great and makes me think of
“My Cup Runneth Over” and Ed Ames,
his rich baritone, and Psalm 23,
the goodness and mercy and plenty
and not the evil or shadow of death,
and my parents who told me oranges
were a luxury when they were young,
a treat, a Christmas gift and, some years,
the only gift. My parents, children
of the Great Depression, filled our lives
with gifts. On Christmas mornings before
we could play with anything, we had
to arrange all our gifts on our beds,
a display of how far they had come,
a proof of how they spoiled my sister
and me. When I see my mandarin tree,
its wealth of miniature oranges,
I see that embarrassment of riches.
Cecil Morris is a retired high school English teacher, sometime photographer, and casual walker. His first collection of poems, At Work in the Garden of Possibilities, came out from Main Street Rag in 2025. He has poems in The 2River View, Common Ground Review, Rust + Moth, Talking River Review, and elsewhere. He and his wife, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool Oregon coast and the hot Central Valley of California.
