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Dorianne Laux, Ellen Bass, Fruit, Ode, Ode to the First Peach, OpenLinkNight

Welcome to OpenLinkNight everyone. As you know, this is your opportunity to link 1 poem of your choice as this is no prompt-day. For those who missed the Mr Linky deadline the past week or this Tuesday’s poetics “Launch: light and truth of painting” this is also your opportunity to share your poem. Out of courtesy, please link back to dVerse Poet Pub if you are sharing your poem.

It is a season of peaches here in Ontario, Canada. For those looking for inspiration, here is our optional mini-prompt: Peach. Here are 2 poems: Peach, and Ode to the First Peach. Use the titles for your poem. Or if a line from the poems below resonated with you, include this line in your poem, with the credit to the poet.

Peach
by Dorianne Laux

I kneel to the ground fall peach,
its russet belly, its honey streaks,
touch its new tough skin, run my thumb
along its deep, sexy cleft. I pluck another
from a low branch, tug it down into
captivity like an animal caught
in a bramble, scooped into my arms
that open to return it to the wide field
of my cutting board where I lift
the knife, slice around the stony pit,
its purple edges bleeding into the gold flesh
in a starburst, and like a star
becoming into silence, miniscule
pulse of living light from this distance,
has been making itself over and over
from the fire within it, like the sound hole
of a violin that welcomes any dark music.
To think we can eat a sunset,
convicted, as we are, to the mud
of this earth, knees dark with dirt, hands
sticky with essence, to think I too
am here in this cleft body, a being
split into parts and seamed back
together, swollen with desire,
hungry for the sun.