SUMMER IN JANUARY

        If my wife ever started a business

        that’s what she’d call it:

                    “Summer in January”.

Suspended downstairs,

      in little jugs of time,

is an entire fruit tree.

Each glass jar is sealed

waiting

to be foomped open,

fork stuck in,

thick juice of a peach

slicking off a plump wedge.

If you close your eyes

there is a taste

of sunlight, and bees

even as snow twirls off the roof,

the thermometer sinks,

and icicles knife the fence—

the peach tree,

naked and shivering,

watches the slow chewing

of the husband inside,

how he licks his lips,

and dunks his finger

back into the sweetness

again and again

Patrick Hicks is writer-in-residence at Augustana College. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and Poetry East. His latest collection is Finding the Gossamer (Salmon, 2008). He lives in South Dakota.