Friedrich Nietzsche “When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
I’ve already trimmed you, cut off your limbs
and stolen joy from your satin blooms.
I didn’t care for you as well as I could have—
I left your watering to the rain.
Now I see you’ve produced fruit
even though your roots are dry.
In my shame I fill a bucket
with wood chips and bring it by.
I’ve so much hope for you, my peach,
so much anticipation. You’ve filled
your arms with small peachlets I cull
with caution, not sure what will last.
Look, some sparrow has already pecked
at your hard stones. I blame myself
for not netting soon enough,
so now I out the ladder, out the scissors,
the net, climb up, and wrap.
After all that work I stand back
and weep—so sure that birds
or squirrels will grab the sweet.
—
Carla Schwartz’s poems appear in The Practicing Poet and her collections Signs of Marriage, Mother, One More Thing, and Intimacy with the Wind. Learn more: carlapoet.com, or all social media @cb99videos. Recent/upcoming curations: Great Weather for MEDIA, Contemporary Haibun Online, Modern Haiku, Paterson Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, One Art, Rattle Magazine, Sheila-Na-Gig, Spank the Carp, The MacGuffin, and Leon Literary Review. Carla Schwartz received the NEPC Cummings Prize.
