We think of walks as lines, sometimes crooked,
zigzaggy, maybe even loopy, but always A to B.
So I was surprised, delighted, a little disconcerted
when yesterday’s eight-hour walk through the city
turned out to be a peach with a military cemetery—
thousands of white markers on a green hill—for a pit.
The morning’s steps were so many bites and swallows
of juicy flesh—strangers, dogs, buildings, birds,
thoughts that went nowhere but somehow brought me
to a standstill, my hand on a sun-warmed gravestone.
And then, can’t say I understand how it happened,
the afternoon’s steps remade the peach in my belly,
each stranger, dog, building, bird, and random thought
packing the flesh together, adding back the sweet juice.