How hard light works
to pass through jars
of peaches. We think wind
must feel like this sometimes
when it comes from the east,
asking, Where is the water?

It is difficult to answer, water
liking such peculiar work.
We have seen it eat
rock, cry orchards into bloom, jar
the soles of trees, seen it seep away in the time
it takes us to unwind

our reckonings of its behavior to each other. Wind
is not people, and neither is water,
though, in the summertime
when we are not working
at being more important than jars
of light and sugar, it is easy

to forget this fact, to look east
and say something to the wind
about peach-warm streams, wait with mouths ajar
for its reply to, at, through us. To water
we might not say anything right away. It works
best if someone eventually goes first, but this takes time,

and it is lonely, and, though time
is not people either, we want to say, East
(minds wet in the heat) work
that throwing arm a little harder, wind
up, pitch, then spit: there, there is the water.
There is rain filling up shoes, metal barrels, and jars.

And here we are, collected on the porch like jars,
collected by and for that through which we know time:
Water.
And if, singing its way from the east,
looking for a surface to see itself against, the wind
doesn't notice us, it won't matter. What private work

it is to spend a peach jar of its color of east,
time and wind
understand. Water, finding us, finds its work.

 

-Meredith Martinez