Steadily

     "You should have a softer pillow than my heart."
          —Byron, to his wife

In the sun-ladled spot we dug for it
the peach tree endeavors. It raises rain,
pumps it through hairy roots, trunk, branches, veins
and blows from itself like bubbles of spit

green fruits that are now blushing into peaches.
Why the rain forms a peach and not a plum
or walnut or star-ball of a sweetgum,
the tree can't say. It shivers in the breeze

with satisfaction, completely unfettered
by what it is or isn't. Sunshine cooks
in its leaves, leaves drop off, and the long dead
revive inside its arteries. These cricks

and drones and cryptic corridors—I'm tired
of sadness, the baroque rations of grief.
I have lived in thwarts and starts, a gray trial
of suspended time, since my father’s death

while patient as rain you've waited for me
to draw you in and know you again bodily.

Copyright © 2002 Michelle Boisseau All rights reserved
from West Branch
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission