Peach Farm
PEACH FARM
by Dean Young
I felt pretty stupid in brown pants,
brown jacket, shirt, shoes and tie
at the peach farm. I cast them off!
The young peaches clung to the limbs
like sag-resistent muscles.
It’s a good place to have a pony. Ditto
a heartbeat, something long, a Spanish-
English dictionary and lots of water
to remove stickiness. Bees are encouraged,
so too worms in the soil and every evening,
bats. Quadratic equations, not so much so.
Only an old dog is buried there.
I can’t find the anvil
but then “Go find the anvil”
turns out to be some kind of joke
at the peach farm. The owner started paying
for the peach farm by selling a motorcycle
then selling peaches. Walking through the trees-
how different from looking for a Ph.D.
Yet also not. One good thing about
being unable to sit beside you
is seeing the back of your head in the leaves.
How far we are from kissing
our damage deposit goodbye.
i like how the poem started with the casting off of brown pants and shirt–brown is an earthen color but the poet’s tone here is one of having tried (vainly) to stay grounded but it all amounts to superficiality…then symbolically throwing all that away to take in the real deal at the Peach Farm.
mmm. Sounds like a quaint little get-away in beginning part of poem but at end we find there really is no getting away–all we can do is take in what we can from a landmine of ‘on-the-upsides’…
Everyone has a special place where they can re-center and find themselves again. I think the Peach Farm holds great personal value for the poet but also, like so many things in life, it holds some regret as well. The last 5 lines really shook me up and changed the whole outlook of poem: “One good thing about
being unable to sit beside you is seeing the back of your head in the leaves. How far we are from kissing our damage deposit goodbye.”
It sounds like a failed relationship but apparently there was enough good times here with this love interest that she became associated with the physical and mental ‘happy place’ of the Peach Farm, but when the love turned sour her person was still present…lingering…in a sort of limbo between good and bad memories.
Awesome work!!!