Peachtree, and: Cycle

Poems Alice Cabaniss Bass Peachtree Palm Sunday, and the brass cross thinly outlined against walnut panels balances below a hexagonal window with a gold center like the sun. Like the peach that will come. Today, the trees have been ditched and harrowed. Their blossoms have been devoured by the sun, by bees. Buzz, the flies have started already, warning the bee-return when fruit has fallen at the foot of the tree in July. The boughs of the peachtrees are bent as the olives of Italy. The slopes are red instead of sandy but the curve of the earth is the same. Now the peachtree is birthing its buds, fuzzy green and then a pale orange, a shadow of the land before the bursting carmine-yellow of the ripe fruit hides under leafshade. Come into the peachtree's branches with me. Let us suck the sweetness from the April air to last us until the fruit is harvested and in our hands. Cycle Crumbling clay washes downhill in rain. Water finds its level traveling under mineral cargo, eroding cornfields and dislodging topsoil. Then in the cricket-quiet kudzu leaps to pine branches like green fire, into the arms of the light poles, broad leaves advancing to cover. We dream. Creatures are moving beneath the kudzu matting, scurrying to enter the crafted houses: a Kudzu Spirit molds clay into weapons against sprayers who stem the rampant green. Clay washes downhill in rain. Water finds its level over and over. 7 ...