Late August the galley blooms
fruit flies, smoke-winged & garnet-eyed, circling the soft caves
of over-sweet summer fruit: pear & blueberry, clingstone
peach. Each night I pray resurrection
but am deceived. Faith is not feast
but desire, not beauty of the table but what drags us starving
there – what was buried inside
the sweetness, inside
the plum’s bruised heart: larvae, pearling. Saint dear
of my difficult hunger:
cloy me
mote me
rise me up
