Decline

Why does the flesh of this peach
just yesterday so perfumed and perfect
now look like a small purse collapsing
into itself, and beginning to darken

to a shade reminiscent of sepia
on the table? Perhaps the warm
yellow wedge of light falling
so picturesquely on the bowl

of fruit through the half-moon
windowpane set into the kitchen door
has something to do with its too rapid
onset of decline. Perhaps, and this

is likely, it was on its way there anyway,
despite our good intentions now thwarted:
in other words, our intentions to take it
in all its glorious readiness, to slice it

into a bowl at the peak of sugary firmness.
And having ingested all of it, skin and flesh,
down to the pit, don’t we customarily sit back
and say its purpose has been most sweetly

fulfilled? Which is to say,
what it comes down to as the measure
of experience is mostly and still
our own: assortment of little yardsticks

against which the mercurial universe
schools us about accretion… So this slowly
wrinkling globe becomes differently endearing:
how unlike a hard, bright abacus bead

it wants to be; how it seems instead
to want to be cupped in its loosening
garment; to be held and only regarded
as if in remembrance before its dissolve.

In response to Via Negativa: Ministry of truth.