Repeater Poem by Michael C. Peterson

Repeater—
then you played the summer's
underwhelming passage, exactly,
yet so much left to perform, or to be poured
back out, in the way of what
is once stolen and prized, but briefly, then
suddenly given up, vessel tipping
into vessel, the body reiterating what passed
in, was held, now backward
from the mouth, all a stomach can remember
but you refill it,
and what is not returned,
the obvious appeal to living—
or at least persisting—it all wants loudly out—
so where is the civility in this?
It was once perhaps more simple. Yes.
That spring you went farther in
the orchard, felt the cool, how resistingly
the new hull of an almond, cool
to the palm, so much so it ached to palm it
or was itself an ache, enclosed
and private—seamlessly green stone and
not the soft dullness you'd imagined
but nonetheless plain—small, not insufferable
weight—just to hold it—before
even putting it down your throat—felt civil.