Peaches
What was I thinking?--when in the awkwardness
of youth, I dropped a peach stone and it rolled
under a fence in San Luis, beyond my reach--
Did I imagine it would take root in spite
of the gravel and rain-soaked newspapers
or that it might be carried off by a songbird?
No, it was forgotten in other thoughts:
of oranges and apples and later, bananas,
freckled and aromatic ripening bunches.
But now chance finds me at the farmers’ market,
a wrinkled hand carefully cupping
a Colorado peach so as not to bruise it,
fingers embracing its velvet to prevent it
from rolling down to the gravel below,
and think again of that abandoned peach stone--
That had I the courage to hop the fence and retrieve it,
perhaps, and planted it in my own garden,
tending it, nurturing it--
The tree would be fully mature by now;
in springtime hung with bloom along every bough
and in late summer bearing our dimpled fruit.
(First appeared in The Panhandler Quarterly, Winter 2006)
