trucks full…baskets full…tables full
from orchards, from the corner market, dragons’
hoards of sweet golden
fruit ready to dribble down your chin your
hands and arms your bare summer legs

my mother on a ladder with a basket
plucking precious orbs of sunshine
kerchief on her head
dreaming of bright glass jars full of
summer…saved for winter treats

I would climb into the lower branches and
fall…plunk…on the red wood table below
“knocking
the wind out of me,” mother called it, my
abdomen hurt like a popped balloon but

next day I climbed and dropped 
again on the old red table
obstinate, dyspraxic 
child that I was…falling from the
legendary tree…the scent of peaches