Sweet Impossible Blossoms

I have always loved buying fruit at roadside stands, pulling the first peach of summer from a paper bag and biting into its sweetness. Then, later, I sit at the kitchen table and have another, one with cream and sugar, old-fashioned decadence in a small white bowl.

"From Blossoms"

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.

~ Li-Young Lee, from Rose


Li-Young Lee is a contemporary poet.

No known attribution for the photograph.