When I am in the open, life nourishes even those parts so sorely hidden.
—Mark Nepo, “The Book of Awakening”
The peaches are hiding,
hiding their ripening
weight in the underside
of the leaves. Green
and hard, their sweetness
is still a secret, a perhaps,
a dream. They are fed
by what hides them—
a bright chaos of lances,
green and glancing
in the morning breeze.
We become so preoccupied
with what we cannot see.
The harvest concealed
in the tree. The green
parts of ourselves—
what we can’t yet let go,
what we think we need.
Ripening happens.
What’s hidden does not
stay that way. Soon,
in the orchard, the fruit
will redden, will swell,
will reveal itself through
the canopy. And we who
walk through the trees
are also surrounded by
light. We, too, are being
grown by forces beyond us,
within us, an infinite Eros
tending all this ripening.