(with a wave to William Carlos Williams)

Thank you for the peach pie

red gold, gooey, thick and crusty:

peaches carried heaped in a basket

up the hill from the tree we planted

seven years ago, watched over,

pruned, debugged, (harvested

one rock of a peach that first year)

and now its branches bent to the ground

on the uphill side, their burden of fuzzy

softening fruit almost more joy

than they can bear.

You rolled the dough

while I peeled fruit into a pail

my hands deep in the juice and pulp

my mouth smeared where I sucked

my fingers, my hair sticky on my forehead,

tiny fruit flies buzzing in the kitchen.

I helped you lift the flat crust with spatulas

and we laid it safely in the pan. You spiced

the golden bowl with cinnamon and other secrets,

crisscrossed the top with lattice crust,

and this morning, you gone off to school,

I cut a piece and served it on a small blue plate

with milk in a blue cup.

I ate it slowly,

noticing every bite, watching the grasses move

as the breeze swept across the distant hills.

I’ve left the rest for you, sweet baker girl.

I’ll be gone a few days,

but I’ll be thinking of you

eating peach pie.

Gail Rudd Entrekin’s collections of poems are Change (will do you good), which was nominated for a Northern California Book Award; You Notice the Body; and John Danced. Poetry editor of Hip Pocket Press since 2000, she edits the press’ online environmental literary magazine, Canary.  She is editor of the poetry and short fiction anthology Sierra Songs & Descants and the poetry anthology Yuba Flows. She and her husband, writer Charles Entrekin, live in San Francisco’s East Bay.

Peach Pie by Elizabeth Klos, a painter based in Solana Beach, California. Visit her online shop on Etsy.