Day 759: Peaches

There's something indescribably delicious about peaches, isn't there? They're the mascot fruit of summer, orbs of sunset-coloured delight, that taste like sun on a sunkissed summer's day.

In this poem, Li-Young Lee, a much-loved American poet renowned for his tender lyrics, equates peaches most fittingly and beautifully, with joy. The result is gorgeous, a poem that blossoms forth from the page.

From Blossoms - Li-Young Lee 

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward   

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.