Now that it's Lughnasadh, almost Fall,
I want to thank
blueberries. I want to thank peaches, cantaloupes, cherry
tomatoes and corn on the cob. All summer long while we
griped about Republicans, you
were lying there in baskets,
blue eyes silently watching, blinking back tears.
Some of you were whole crimson sunsets in my hand.
I'm not sure what antioxidants
are, but thank you:
I know that you were full of them.
I loved your fuzz, buxom peach, your sass, blackberry.
I loved your smile, honeydew,
halved and split as we
slobbered together. Local strawberry, just one of you
gushing on my tongue was almost too much to bear!
Next summer you could do a better
job of staying
under four dollars a pint; otherwise, no complaint.
How erotic you are, plum, lounging in a sunbeam,
your crimson still-life sweating
in droplets of fever.
You should be ashamed how your waves imploded
on the beaches of my mouth!
Well, it was a scene. But thank
you.
I also want to thank some of you flowers: begonia,
peony, chrysanthemum and lucifer crocosmia.
I do not forget the morning
glory, that soft trumpet
made of sky, calling us inward toward granaries
of moonlight. And now, just as the rest of you languish,
the apples arrive! Round crimson
shouts
from green caverns of August afternoon. O humans,
we too might burst, an orchard of yearnings,
wild but rooted, clustered yet globed
with patience,
we too might drop at the edge of the meadow,
silvered by flurries of milkweed and thistle.
Why should we not bend to our ripening,
the pungent smolder of inward sugars, the grace
and gravity of our Fall? Why should we not bow,
beatific sag of limbs, and bruise our knees
in surrender? Lying on the bee-festered earth,
wormed out with interior paths, and free
from every striving to rise, why not let
the planet turn, and have her way with us,
and do what she loves?
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