- For Peaches redux

When I started the blog almost two years ago, I posted a piece written during the 2007 Eastern Virginia Writing Project.  For Peaches was the last poem I wrote until last week, when an Facebook "missing you" from Susan at the EVWP inspired a spate of poetic musing. So be forewarned ... there may be more to come.

A view of the new rock garden on a blazing hot Texas summer day

Coda

Heat beats down 

from a cloudless blue sky;

it will not rain today.

Four inches in forty weeks;

the drought

biblical.

The rain,

two lusty squalls

too little.

The floodplain,

laid bare by

grasses

dormant

in the face of the sun.

A deer,

not two months gone,

already reduced

to gleaming white.

Even so,

the hill country trees

set their seed in

rusty brown knots of flesh

like so many cobbles of chert

strewn across the Rumple-Comfort soil.

And as I draw beads

of sun-distilled nectar

from each precious drupe,

my knife’s progress is halted,

again and again,

by the stone at each heart:

creation’s prayer

for rain.

Deconstructed Peach Pie

• 1 cup flour
• 1/3 cup lard + 1 Tbs. butter
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 4+ Tbs. ice water

Process the flour, lard, and salt until it resembles corn meal.  Put in a bowl and stir in water with your fingertips, adding just enough to gather the dough into a soft ball.  Roll out thin, slice into strips 1/2 inch wide by 3 to 4 inches long.  Sprinkle lightly with sugar and place on a baking sheet.  Bake at 375 until lightly browned ... 10 to 12 minutes.

• 1/2 cup Mascarpone cheese
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• Sugar
• Vanilla
• Peaches
• Cinnamon sugar

Whip Mascarpone and cream, adding sugar and vanilla to taste. 
Slice peaches and dust with cinnamon sugar.
Set out peaches, pie crust strips, and Mascarpone cream to be combined at the table.