Finding Peaches in the Desert

They taste like a woman, you say

and bite deep into the sweet heat

squeezing through tender skin,

while I laugh, taking the fruit you offer.

We close our eyes and transport

this delicious host to our loves

flown distant as time in dreams.

You can never eat too many, I say and pull

another ripe peach from the desert tree.

It fills my palm, my mouth as I suck

the unhusbanded nectar.

It is delicious as stealing light,

such innocent grace, a holiday

from history and eternity.

We bare our breasts to sun

as women have done for centuries

beside the blue water pool at ease with rabbits, shrill

wasps, the shy steps of occasional deer,

while vultures funnel mid-heaven.

Struck dumb by sun cauterizing

the Sonoran sky that flings its blue skirt

all the way across the ripe hip of Mexico,

we feast on peach after peach, while

peach-colored tanagers, wet

green hummingbirds and the topaz eyes of lizards

attend our anointment.

When I wipe one quarter across my breasts

and down my stomach to my thighs, I

am amazed at the baked odor of love

rising from everything I touch.

This is our ceremony to alter the news

of troops that mass for attack

in the Middle East, to alchemize all hatred

and greed, whatever name

it is given by multinational interests.

There is no aggression in sharing rare fruit

priceless as the wide imaginings of sky

or the brilliant coinage of dragonfly wings.

Even squadrons of wasps and fire ants

armed with nuclear stingers turn

from attack to the pungency of this

ritual feast that celebrates love

in the desert stunned green by unusual rain.