July 9, 2019

Scotch
for David

The peaches, holding court on the market’s rustic tables, look infomercial-perfect, 
bathing in a humid July morning that has already sapped us. We glance, drowsily,
at the slatted baskets. Had the season advanced so far already? The day before, 
we’d gotten a call we couldn’t have predicted, news of a man who slipped away 
while a Yankees game wound down its last innings in his living room. I thought of him, 
still enthralled by his home team, settling back in a chair as if it were an old friend, 
a finger of Scotch to his right, as I reached into my small canvas bag and made space. 
Maybe the peaches wouldn’t be at their sweetest, their skins hiding a subsurface ruin, the pit
rutted with quiet disease. Maybe David should’ve skipped the game, or opted out of that Scotch.
But who can blame any of us for taking any swig of summer we can get?