Wild Peaches

1When the world turns completely upside downYou say we'll emigrate to the Eastern ShoreAboard a river-boat from Baltimore;We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town.You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gownHomespun, dyed butternut's dark gold color.Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

The winter will be short, the summer long,The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.The squirrels in their silver fur will fallLike falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.

2The autumn frosts will lie upon the grassLike bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.The misted early mornings will be cold;The little puddles will be roofed with glass.The sun, which burns from copper into brass,Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfoldTheir knitted mufflers; full as they can hold,Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;The spring begins before the winter's over.By February you may find the skinsOf garter snakes and water moccasinsDwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.

3When April pours the colors of a shellUpon the hills, when every little creekIs shot with silver from the ChesapeakeIn shoals new-minted by the ocean swell,When strawberries go begging, and the sleekBlue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak,We shall live well--we shall live very well.

The months between the cherries and the peachesAre brimming cornucopias which spillFruits red and purple, somber-bloomed and black;Then, down rich fields and frosty river beachesWe'll trample bright persimmons, while we killBronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvas-back.

4Down to the Puritan marrow of my bonesThere's something in this richness that I hate.I love the look, austere, immaculate,Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.There's something in my very blood that ownsBare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,A thread of water, churned to milky spateStreaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meager sheaves;That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath,Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.