Late August the galley blooms

             fruit flies, smoke-winged & garnet-eyed, circling the soft caves

of over-sweet summer fruit: pear & blueberry, clingstone

                                      peach. Each night I pray resurrection

but am deceived. Faith is not feast

                       but desire, not beauty of the table but what drags us starving

                                      there –  what was buried inside

                       the sweetness, inside

the plum’s bruised heart: larvae, pearling. Saint dear

             of my difficult hunger:

                       cloy me

                                                    mote me

             rise me up