Oranges and ashes, another year

On the first day of the New Year we walked to the Wishing Tree. A man stood beside his son and clutched a plastic fruit in his palm. His pink slip dripped below from a yellow string and clip. He wound back his best baseball arm and tossed it to the tree.

As legend goes the higher up you toss your orange, the more chance the dream has. So the crowd built around the trunk and wailed fruit up to the clouds. And like heavy dew the orange balls sunk down leaves as droplets that never fell.

Inside the temple smoke stung the eye. Peanuts, fruits, and candy lay at the toes of sculptures foreheads bowed to, all hope for the calendar turn. Candles floated over tree top reflections in the pond.

We lapped a final circle round the happy madness and left for lunch without tossing our own oranges, feeling as lucky as we were.