A mass of scimitar-curved leaves, and, like lightbulbs shining the darkness, orange-yellow-pink fruit glowing in the afternoon sunlight: my neighbor's peach tree. Planted when the Haitian family moved into the house about 20 years ago, you have grown into a thick-trunked, full-crowned tree thick nearly 25 feet tall and bending with fruit.
Up on my tall stepladder, my head among your branches, I search for clusters of peaches or singletons hidden behind the scooping leaves. There's one to pluck and drop in the bag I carry under my arm, its strap over my shoulder. Oh, a little cluster, there, and two more...if I stretch...whoops...ah, gottem. I pull your flexible branches down, down, and strip them of their globular gold, presaging the night's blood moon. Tippy-top, too high on you for me to reach safely, some drops of peach sweetness still hang, inaccessible to all but the sun that birthed them.
Such fruit! Your peaches are a little narrow, thick of skin and rather fuzzy, sometimes mottled, sometimes weepy with syrupy juice, no supermarket beauties these, in fact so irregular and ugly that I'm surprised repeatedly at how sweet and flavorful they are. The flesh is firm, a little stringy, but so rich in special peach flavor that I keep eating one more. Will this next one disappoint? No, no, it doesn't. My beard is dripping.
My generous neighbor shares the wealth that I love to climb for. There's abundance for all. Tucked between two houses and generally ignored, you've off-handedly laden us with bountiful blessing. I find it, in a way, hard to grasp how so much comes from a life planted two decades ago and left to grow as it would. You shame the poor-mouth talk that so fills the world.
Up on my tall stepladder, my head among your branches, I search for clusters of peaches or singletons hidden behind the scooping leaves. There's one to pluck and drop in the bag I carry under my arm, its strap over my shoulder. Oh, a little cluster, there, and two more...if I stretch...whoops...ah, gottem. I pull your flexible branches down, down, and strip them of their globular gold, presaging the night's blood moon. Tippy-top, too high on you for me to reach safely, some drops of peach sweetness still hang, inaccessible to all but the sun that birthed them.
Such fruit! Your peaches are a little narrow, thick of skin and rather fuzzy, sometimes mottled, sometimes weepy with syrupy juice, no supermarket beauties these, in fact so irregular and ugly that I'm surprised repeatedly at how sweet and flavorful they are. The flesh is firm, a little stringy, but so rich in special peach flavor that I keep eating one more. Will this next one disappoint? No, no, it doesn't. My beard is dripping.
My generous neighbor shares the wealth that I love to climb for. There's abundance for all. Tucked between two houses and generally ignored, you've off-handedly laden us with bountiful blessing. I find it, in a way, hard to grasp how so much comes from a life planted two decades ago and left to grow as it would. You shame the poor-mouth talk that so fills the world.
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