I don't have any peach blossoms in my archive, but I wanted to use this poem! This plum was planted by us many years ago, two trees in one hole, Howard's Miracle (large yellow very sweet) Elephant Heart (huge, red-fleshed, purple skinned) and then the Santa Rosa plum (the common, vulgar prune plum) which we grafted on later (pretty proud of the success of that graft!) when the nurseryman told, us we needed a pollinator for much fruit. I love the gorgeous array of stamens on plum blossoms. And I love how early they bloom. It's been quite a while, though since we have seen any bees. . .
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 bite into
the round jubilance of 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.
Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment