Peaches
A mouthful of language to swallow:
stretches of beach, sweet clinches,
breaches in walls, pleached branches;
britches hauled over haunches;
hunched leeches, wrenched teachers.
What English can do: ransack
the warmth that chuckles beneath
fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet
richness, plashy juices.
I beseech you, peach,
clench me into the sweetness
of your reaches.
Notes
After the playful, storied slices of Alberto Ríos’s pies, Peter Davison returns us to the sheer physical euphoria of language and fruit entwined. Peaches anchors August's theme of Feast, showing how the simple act of biting into a peach turns sound, texture, and taste into an intoxicating, sensory deluge. By demanding to be clenched into sweetness, the poem reminds us that to feast is to let both tongue and mouth drown completely in the richness of the present. #poetry #peaches #language #food #august
Peter Davison, "Peaches" from The Poems of Peter Davison, 1957-1995. Copyright © 1995 by Peter Davison.