That almost cloying sweetness
of summer—
all the blossoms
spinning spare sugar
out of the extra hours of light,
the blue lusciousness
of water and the
candied stripes of tree shade,
our skin, and the skins of our
daughters and sons, like peaches
and nectarines blushing
pleasantly darker with
the slow simmer of each passing day—
these things make it possible
not to endure, but to ignore—
or obfuscate for a little longer—
to mask the bitter tang of death which
always smolders in the background.
Idle afternoons induce in us daydreams
not of stingy bees' stingers
but their generous amber
honey soothing
the backs of our ticklish throats;
we forget
how true it is,
and how telling
that whichever holy specimen
of fruit we are handed—
however ripe and juicy, bewilderingly
redolent, immeasurably round—
the most perfect thing
we can think to do
is bite into it;
to destroy that integrity,
to take every fraction of its cool
sweet perfection, reduce it, and
lock it away deep inside—
as if somehow, we could force
even the smallest truth
to be ours and
ours alone.
