Putting Up Peaches

Beside the garden wall where grapevines run,
a peach tree stands, diseased and bent with age.
Her blackened branches reach up to the sun
in daily supplication for her wage.

Each year, I think, must surely be her last,
but faithfulness is undeterred by whims.
So, not content to rest on harvests past,
she bears young fruit on geriatric limbs.

With every spring, new buds and blooms emerge
and swell with promise fed by summer rains.
Though twisted and decrepit, still the surge
of liquid light flows through her ancient veins.

When winter strips her bare, I'll be consoled
by pantry shelves stacked deep with jars of gold.









Contest/Publish Records:
UTSPS Winter 2008, traditional form, 1st (cash award)
UTSPS Poet Tree, Feb/Mar 2009 issue
UTSPS Panorama, 2009, Vol. 28
Winner, American Fork Arts Council Poetry On Canvas 2011 (Entered under the title "Preserving" with alternate final couplet as follows: "I’ll gather and preserve her living gold/ to line my pantry shelves against the cold.")
Art song setting here: http://www.mryantaylor.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Preserving.pdf
Wilderness Interface Zone, 2/7/2014, http://wilderness.motleyvision.org/2014/putting-up-peaches-by-merrijane-rice/
Messages on the Water http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/merrijane

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