In early June
comes a five-day period
when every peach on the tree
arrives at a perfect
skin-splitting ripeness
and you race the birds
rushing into the back yard
with a blue plastic bucket.
You drag the six-foot
aluminum ladder
from the garage
climb tenuously
and reach for each round
fuzzy piece of fruit
with the fleshy pads
of your fingertips,
sucking in heady
peach scent
imagining cobbler
and jam.
The fruit is ready.
It drops into your palm.
You feel an urgency
to grasp what comes
quickly and briefly.
You set soft peaches
in shoe boxes
and brown grocery sacks,
take them to your next-door neighbor
and the elderly man
across the street,
to your mother, your brother
and the cousin who goes with you
to church on Sunday.
I can feel taste and smell the peaches.
Thank you, Nancy!
Love this poem, as I love peaches!!!
Thanks, Barbara! I love all the wonderful stone fruits showing up at the farmers’ markets this time of year.
Nice poem, Nancy! I so like the sounds and the images of the lines:
“every peach on the tree
arrives at a perfect
skin-splitting ripeness”
and
“You set soft peaches
in shoe boxes
and brown grocery sacks…”
thanks so much, Jan!! Always so nourishing to get some Amherst-style encouragement!