Little Peach / Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
Sphagnum palustre, Blunt-leaved Bog-moss
from A Poet’s Field Guide to Mosses
Baby’s breath, lamb’s bleat, little peach. Sleek of pulp and feet. Cream. Loud pealing of bells. Dream. Pillows of plants, gleam the grass together. Stitch. Branches tether leaves, no sleeves, a narrow. Taper. Candles breaking in the grass. Shrink of throat and heart won’t pass. Your ditch-ripe cheeks, your pastel heat. Palustre is a marsh but if you’re classed by where you come from you’re the edge that meets the soften, you’re the coughing of blossom giving way to wood. Woven leaves, no sleeves, a shallow. Pink is an afterthought. Peach is the leaf you brought. Your fleshy soft and outer. Your hard a nutless butter. Nothing in that isn’t soft. Nothing out that isn’t soft. Nothing in that isn’t soft. Nothing out that isn’t soft. Stitch a sunset using ditches. Stitch a life using peaches. See it grow. In the marshes no-one knows what patterns. Peek. Little quilt of heat. Fingertips dust sleep. Palustre, palustre, creeps along the marrow, weaving pinks of mallow in the flushes, butter-blushes.
Details Plantarum indigenarum et exoticarum icones ad vivum coloratae, oder, Sammlung nach der Natur gemalter Abbildungen inn- und ausländlischer Pflanzen, für Liebhaber und Beflissene der Botanik, image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, contributed by the Harvard University Botany Library.