Here's to the memory of a beautiful June day I spent picking peaches, pounds and pounds of peaches, with my mom last summer. It was one of those bright-white early summer afternoons in Georgia, where the heat was so direct and penetrating that the big plush peaches were warm to the touch when we plucked them from the trees.
In the days that followed, I had so much fruit to use that I barely knew what to do with myself. Peach cobbler, peach pie, three varieties of peach salsa, and a batch of finicky peach chutney that went nicely with goat cheese on toasted baguette rounds. Peaches comin' out my ears...ahh, the surpluses of summertime.
From Blossoms
by 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.
Just finished the last jar of peachsauce.
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