for erica
It gives her dreams
from which she can't wake up.
She calls it quicksand
or the southbound to Georgia
where ivy bands
around beams
of inherited porches.
In back a grove of oranges
grows, each as wide as a hand
from pinky to thumb
in clusters three feet
across, some
as wide as the trunk
of the tree itself.
Further the land
is dense and gorges
with crops of wheat -
tall stalks, plump
and unthreshed, neat
as the teeth of a comb.
Distant, the ocean
encroaches in pleats.
Out some leagues,
past the folds of sand,
my friend holds
the side of a stump-like
raft, riding the foam
of a wave of test results.
