Poem by Ellen Bass

Ode to the First Peach

Only one insect has feasted here,
a clear stub of resin
plugs the scar. And the hollow
where the stem was severed
shines with juice.
The fur still silvered
like a caul. Even
in the next minute,
the hairs will darken,
turn more golden in my palm.
Heavier, this flesh,
than you would imagine
like the sudden
weight of a newborn.
Oh what a marriage
of citron and blush!
It could be a planet
reflected through a hall
of mirrors. Or
what a swan becomes
when a fairy shoots it
from the sky at dawn.
At the beginning of the world,
when the first dense pith
was ravished and the stars
were not yet lustrous
coins fallen from the
pockets of night,
who could have dreamed
this would be curried
from the chaos.
Scent of morning and sugar,
bruise and hunger.
Silent, swollen, clefted life,
remnant always remaking itself
out of that first flaming ripeness.

First published on pages 58 – 59 in Like a Beggar by Ellen Bass.  Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press 2014. 

Link to the video -- https://youtu.be/kMCN6D6Dkjw

A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ellen Bass' latest book is Indigo (Copper Canyon, 2020). Among her awards are Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and her poems regularly appear in The New Yorker and other journals. She teaches in Pacific University's MFA program.

---