Dean Young, "Peach Farm"

I’m thinking it’s time to go back

to the peach farm or rather

the peach farm seems to be wanting me back

even though the work of picking, sorting,

the sticky perils and sudden swarms are done.

Okay, full disclosure, I’ve never

been on a peach farm, just glimpsed

from a car squat trees I assumed

were peach and knew a couple in school

who went off one summer, so they said,

to work on a peach farm. She was pregnant,

he didn’t have much intention, canvases

of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste.

He’d gotten fired from the lunch counter

for putting too much meat

on the sandwiches of his friends

then ended up in Macy’s in New York

selling caviar and she went home

I think to Scranton, two more versions

of never hearing from someone again.

I’d like to say the most important fruits

are within but that’s the very sort of bullshit

one goes to the peach farm to avoid,

not just flight from quadratic equations,

waiting for the plumber,

finding out your insurance won’t pay.

Everyone wants out of the spider’s stomach.

Everyone wants to be part of some harvest

and stop coughing to death and cursing

at nothing and waking up nowhere near

an orchard. Look at these baskets,

bashed about, nearly ruined with good employ.

Often, after you’ve spent a day on a ladder,

you dream of angels, the one with the trumpet

and free subscriptions to the New Yorker

or the archer, the oink angel, angel

of ten dollar bills found in the dryer

or the one who welcomes you in work gloves

and says if you’re caught eating a single peach,

even windfall, you’ll be executed.

Then laughs. It’s okay, kiddo,

long as you’re here, you’re one of us.


__________

Source: Poetry (June 2012).