Another Seasonal Poem

Since we have been talking about seasons, here is a poem about the season of harvest, about how the pain in our lives later becomes part of the goodness we have to offer.

Harvest

Late summer, I pull a peach. The tree

lets it go with a quiet snap, and I know

to pick the others before they fall.

My arms tire from constant reaching;

I stop to see how the trunk has thickened.

It nearly hides a barbed wire coiled around it

by someone years ago -- I don’t know who, or why.

This year a few barbs show; next year, none:

the way wanting you disappeared but never left,

a memory surrounded by living, so firmly encased

that the sting comes as an unexpected gift

only when high winds cross this place.

I won’t try gouging it away. Wrapped in the rest

of me, it becomes, after all, part of the harvest.