The Weight of Two Oranges

it was not constant concern
for the troubled planet
harnessing her thoughts
that day so much as the weight
of two oranges in a cloth bag
slung over her shoulder
the careful keeping to the
shade side of the street
vines flowering sun-stained adobe
cobbles slanting toward home
where stone steps leading
to the street below marked
the edge of the hot day––
it was the market woman
fingering brown spotted eggs
praising her beautiful hens
eyes above mask smiling up at the
gringa willing to pay five pesos
an egg all nine in the basket sold
a day’s work complete
and the gringa left content
with a world spiraling more easily
now around a few eggs
and the weight of two oranges

Lynda Wilde is a Canadian writer/photographer living between the cities of Kingston, ON, Canada, and Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico.Her poetry has been published in:  Filling Station, Freefall, Zygote, Amethyst Review, Willawa Journal, and her prose in Guernica Edition’s 2022 Anthology of Canadian Flash Fiction Writers, “This Will Only Take A Minute.”