The Peach Itself

It's been too long since I've written about birds or fresh peaches or thought about the temperature at which the oven should be set. I am in the daze of pregnancy, nodding at people as they speak to me but really doing little more than turning inside myself and feeling for kicks. The sun is so bright today, and I laid on the roof, burned my belly (just a bit), wondered (of course) if this means I'll be a bad mother, decided (I hope) that it doesn't. Up there, I watched a pigeon make circles on the silver flattop and ate a just-washed nectarine.

Sometimes I wonder if the doing might be just as good as the writing, if what makes it all worth it is the peach itself--all that sweet juice--and not the hump of the p, that long e, ever-eager a, the ch-ch-ch like a cloudy day train forcing itself over and over up a too high hill.