Every summer during my childhood, my parents would load all of us kids into our wood-paneled Ford station wagon and head out the East Tennessee mountains for a long drive to the coast. Our destination varied from year to year: Myrtle Beach, Jekyll Island, Panama City, Orlando. No matter where we ended up, the highlight of every trip was pulling into a roadside stand to buy a quart or two of peaches. We’d stand right there as cars whizzed by and sink our teeth into the sweet orange flesh, juice dripping down our arms and smiles covering our faces. That blissful moment is what I thought of when I read this poem by Li-Young Lee.

From Blossoms

by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward 
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. 

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   
the round jubilance of peach.

 There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.