Ah! And red; and they have peach fuzz, ah!
They are full of juice and the skin is soft.
They are full of the color of my village
And of fair weather, summer dew, peace.

Slid out of me like stones,
like peonies and roses,
pricked like a holly bush,
lulled me with the hymns of weevils.
Loud like the lion that kills.
Flew out of me like cheetahs,
took hold of me like lice, like love.
Ripped me open like a cougar.
Rose up at me like a cream-bellied cobra.
Ah! and red; and they have peach fuzz, ah!

Clattering and weeping. Diapering
and digging. Exuberant singing,
firecats leaping. Peaches, more
peaches! Crates of velvety freestones.
In a basket, at breakfast, with a wasp.
Hail, pale stranger, come down
from the Kunlun Shan Mountains.
Beware of leaf curl, brown rot, beware
the speckled emperor, the catapult moth.
They are full of juice and the skin is soft.

Bloodmeal, bonemeal, or stunted growth.
Peach wood arrows to shoot away evil;
peach wood wands to ward away the bad.
Caravaggio’s memorable discolorations,
molted and wormholed, Monet and Rubens
speaking the truth, through peach and leafage,
from their hearts and tongues. Budded or grafted
from a suitable rootstock. Budded or grafted,
my dear luscious darlings, my dappled courage.
They are full of the color of my village.

They grow like stars. They grow like mountains,
like fissures, an inch or six a year. Measure
themselves against a lazy yellow wall. Compete
to see who’ll ripen first. Stevens said,
of parenting, it’s a “terrible blow to poor
literature,” Holly, peach of his reason,
pen stilled till she reached the age of nine,
firecat closing his big, bright eyes.
They are not ours, not ours to keep, spice
of fair weather, summer dew, peace.