Nectarines
The afternoon
is surreal with lemon balm
and lotus blossoms,
punctuated with
a too-distinct clarity
of tangled Kudzu,
and you in a hammock.
This is the way
July progresses --
a month so rapacious
it consumes us like nectarines.
We are rooted here
so permanently
nothing grows
in our shadows.
First appeared in What Remains, published by Argonne House Press, 2001
