Preserves

The peaches, clumsy
in their juices, crowded
boisterous in their glass
have no place in a cellar
of otherwise orderly goods
dried and sacked and hung
See how bright and dark
at once. St. Augustine knows
to steal a thing and waste it
is no kind of benevolence.
We have skinned the fruit whole
and capped and sealed and kept
them here and know—we will admire
their sunny glow beside the beans
and never eat them. Summer is always
coming and the things you preserve
always falter against the strength
of hope. The cellar is quiet
and the metal lids pop against the gas,
the peaches swollen like suns trying
to rise and set, die and return.