June 9, 2020

the miracle

The peaches are coming, as Maureen promised. Gone are the pastel blooms I’d cajoled
in early May. The branches are bony as we’d found them at our arrival, just after 
that last snow, the trunk still gnarled as knuckles. Two weeks ago, and overnight,
a witchy fungus overtook the leaves, and I stood, fearful, at their bloodied tips.
The tree’s survival is beyond me, and how could it not be? It is a tree, and I, a woman
tiptoeing the perimeter in slippers and rubber gloves, swatting the flies at her ear. 
Meanwhile, an unseen effort has pulsed steadily on, unrattled by my theatrics; now,
tilted at the notch of certain stems, the beginnings of fruit, and I am alive to see it. I am
alive to see it. Sometimes, everything turns into the miracle I’d always hoped
it would be.