for my father I have asked him to tell it—how               he heard the curing barn took hours to burn, the logs thick, accustomed               to heat—how, even when it was clear all was lost, the barn and the tobacco               fields within it, they threw water instead on the nearby peach tree,               intent on saving something, sure, though, the heat had killed it, the bark               charred black. But in late fall, the tree broke into bloom, perhaps having               misunderstood the fire to be some brief, backward winter. Blossoms               whitened, opened. Peaches appeared against the season—an answer,               an argument. Word carried. People claimed the fruit was sweeter for being               out of time. They rode miles to see it. He remembers my grandfather               saying, his mouth full, this is a sign, and the one my father               was given to eat—the down the same, soft as any other, inside               the color of cream, juice clear as water, but wait, wait; he holds               his cupped hand up as though for me to see again there is no seed,               no pit to come to—that it is infertile, and endless somehow.