Luscious and succulent, the fruit causes the
Limb to sag under the weight of its deliciousness
The juices carrying tasty lifeblood and attracting
Pollinators and pests alike, a natural equilibrium
Indulging in the peach is a sensual experience
Sticky and sweet and gushing with flavor
Embarrassing almost, to publicly engage in an
Activity that seems better suited to the boudoir
Sex sells and so the peach enjoys a cultish
Place in the market and in the imagination
There is no confusion as to its dominance in the
Hierarchy and hieroglyphics of emoji
To hold the peach, to raise it to nostril and
Inhale is to touch the ethereal pulse, is to
Breathe in the wisdom of its creator and
I am not taking sides as to who or what did it
The peach, containing extremes, embodying the
Spectrum, shaped not quite as an oblate spheroid
But close enough is a planet that one can grasp
In a palm and begin to understand the celestial mysteries
Peachy is a common reply to the inquisitive
Salutation, a positive response to the question
Of how is it going or hanging, or at least it was
In decades past, probably poised for a renaissance
Just as baggy pants and sport shields and the
Other ways that the kids pretend that they are
Cool and not copying the forebears that they
Ridicule, not realizing the delectable irony
Peachy is at best an incomplete adjective because
Underneath the skin, burrowed within the
Saccharine flesh is a gnarled, hard pit
That you may have tried to eat as a child
The center of the peach, its heart is bitter
Another balance point as nothing in this worl
Can be purely one thing or another, our
Joy is accompanied, countervailed by suffering
The stone inside is impenetrable, indigestible
Destined for the compost or more likely landfill
And yet we do not conceive as a peach by its
Core which is confusing and superficial
Nor do we consider that the peach is prone
To rot, is indeed hilariously fragile and
Subject to the fickle whims of maternal
Nature and her minions and incantations
Descending from ripe to putrid is our fate
As well, an inevitable decline, decomposition
Our ultimate end, which makes it important to
Taste the sugariness of these fleeting years
From apotheosis to dust in the wink of an eye
We and the peaches return to whence we came
To become nutrients that nourish our next iterations
And therefore become a part of them, an inheritance
In the next season of unknown duration, that lineage
Begins to sprout again, nurtured and protected but
Still vulnerable, an innate reticence formed from the
Recalled traumas of the predecessors
Predators physical and otherwise lay in wait to
Strike at the burgeoning fruit, but this peach is hale
And hearty, stubborn in its destiny to ripen in glorious fashion
To continue the eternal cycle