In a Yard of Fallen Yellow Peaches I Am Listening by Andrew Hemmert

Those radio towers reaching like the hands of fruit harvesters

In a Yard of Fallen Yellow Peaches I Am Listening

by Andrew Hemmert

to a construction worker singing along loudly
with his scratchy little radio, and I am in love
with everything. Even the wasps drinking the rotting fruit
at my feet. Even how each blow from the hammer jolts through me
and my solitude, though what even is solitude
in a world of cellular phones and satellites? I am
thinking the arrays orbiting miles over my head
look like frilled dragons with their neck skin spread out wide signaling
not fear but music. And the construction worker’s music
relies on a simpler signal. Those radio towers
reaching like the hands of fruit harvesters into a heaven
that aspires to, but cannot match, a peach tree in full ripeness
dropping its blushing stars into the mulch. Cannot match
this hope of going on, a stranger hard at work and singing.

First published in The Missouri Review (Issue 48.2, 2025)