You Can Eat the Evidence

The peach parts badly around the stone.
You give me the larger half
and lick the torn place on your thumb.
I have no objection to being alive
at this particular table.

Before breakfast I buried the calf.
The spade struck a bottle, then clay.
I broke the bottle to get past it.
The mother stood at the fence
with milk hardening down one leg.

There are jobs that leave the hands
unable to close neatly around a cup.
You set mine beside the bread
and did not touch it for me.

Our graft-warrant has a frost guard:
the successor must be supplied in living sap,
not borrowed from an assumed summer.
I inspect the bud beneath the binding.
Its witness is still sealed.
The dead stock offers nothing to unfold.

You say this branch is taking.
I want the whole tree inside your saying,
the white grub and the ladder,
the year we have no right to spend yet.

Yesterday the church sent a form
about the use of the lower field.
I wiped peach juice from my wrist with it.
There is still room for a signature
where the paper has dried.

At noon we go to the graft.
You loosen the tape one turn.
Under it, pale tissue has crossed
the cut from both directions.

I have seen this before.
I stay longer than seeing requires.

Your hand rests open on the fence.
A wasp lands, tests the salt,
and leaves without taking anything
I can name.

The peach stone is in my pocket.
I keep rubbing it
while you talk about rain.

Mike Anderton is a poet who was born and lives in the South West of the UK. He shares a home with his partner and a dog, and works as a scientist when he’s not reading or writing poetry.