I have asked him to tell it—how <br /> he heard the curing barn took hours <br /> <br />to burn, the logs thick, accustomed <br /> to heat—how, even when it was clear all <br /> <br />was lost, the barn and the tobacco <br /> fields within it, they threw water <br /> <br />instead on the nearby peach tree, <br /> intent on saving something, sure, <br /> <br />though, the heat had killed it, the bark <br /> charred black. But in late fall, the tree <br /> <br />broke into bloom, perhaps having <br /> misunderstood the fire to be <br /> <br />some brief, backward winter. Blossoms <br /> whitened, opened. Peaches appeared <br /> <br />against the season—an answer, <br /> an argument. Word carried. People <br /> <br />claimed the fruit was sweeter for being <br /> out of time. They rode miles to see it. <br /> <br />He remembers my grandfather <br /> saying, his mouth full, this is <br /> <br />a sign, and the one my father <br /> was given to eat—the down the same, <br /> <br />soft as any other, inside <br /> the color of cream, juice clear <br /> <br />as water, but wait, wait; he holds <br /> his cupped hand up as though for me <br /> <br />to see again there is no seed, <br /> no pit to come to—that it is <br /> <br />infertile, and endless somehow.<br /><br />Claudia Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/second-bearing-1919/
