A preface to Day 18’s Dispatch from the Line:
Strikes are a stressful and chaotic experience for everyone, but our members have managed to find moments of joy and laughter amidst it all. One unexpected source of glee has been … oranges. Or rather, satsumas, as we’ve learned they are called.
Sourced from Akhroma Inc., a local grocery store next door to our strike office at 92 Capital Drive, they are absolutely delicious and we always look forward to getting our daily dose of Vitamin C.
Our blogger has even composed a poem in honour of our citrus obsession. For today’s Dispatch from the Line, please enjoy Ode to an Orange… or An Orange by Any Other Name by Lee Ellen Pottie and juiced up by Richard Lemm.
Ode to an Orange… or An Orange by Any Other Name
Smaller than an orange, bigger
than a clementine, sweeter than a lemon
and juicier than any tangerine,
the Satsuma is an ancient boon, a solar gift
to colleagues on the picket lines: Satsumas
peel with one fluid motion of two chilled hands,
their succulence certain to quench our thirst
and quell our hunger pangs in twelve radiantly sensual
vesicles. No pips or pith to cross the lips.
A geneticist’s puzzle, Satsumas may have first blossomed
in old China, then wafted by ship across the East
China Sea to Kyushu Island, the southern tip of Japan.
Came ashore in Florida, one million immigrant
trees taking root in three short years and spreading
west through New Orleans to Texas and California,
nature transcending, in all its diversity,
our transient and makeshift boundaries.
Satsumas have more venerable mandarin
DNA – 80% – than the also-rans –
clementines, pages, and tangerines.
Satsuma is a royal fruit, worthy of our intrepid
walkers, HQ workers, and sympathetic passersby.
Satsuma is a luscious haiku.
Satsuma is Zen – the sound of one orange clapping
Solidarity.
Solidarity.
By Lee Ellen Pottie and juiced up by Richard Lemm
Pictures by Kim Mears
