From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bit into
the round jubilance of a peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
This poem comes from a splendid anthology called Staying Alive, which I picked up before a long plane trip once.
It is spring. I was sad when the magnolia blossoms (the first blooms of spring here) began falling from the trees and leaving naked branches in their stead... but then tiny green leaves started appearing on the trees, and white and pink and yellow and glorious deep purple came out on others. And then our yard broke out in an epidemic of wildflowers-- violets and whites and pale blues and yellows. I'd never seen anything like it. But then the neighbors started mowing their lawns. And then P. started getting antsy to mow ours...
I put him off for a week, saying, please, please, let it along a little longer, you're going to destroy all those flowers! This weekend when the mower came out, I took my camera outside and took photographs, and lay among those blooms and inhaled their scent and felt sad that they were going....
... but they didn't go. Although there are fewer blossoms than there were before, the white and the purple and the yellow blooms are still there, peaking up through the grass. And yet another tree has opened up its buds to spill forth blossoms.
O, I love this spring!
No comments:
Post a Comment