Rosemary read the poem From Blossoms, by Li-Young Lee, from an
anthology titled Dancing with Joy: 99 Poems, by Roger Housdon (ed.), 2007, Random House.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dave read a passage from Christopher Camuto's Islands, in the book, Elemental South: An Anthology of Southern
Nature Writing by Dorinda G. Dallmeyer, ed., p. 34, 2004, University of
Georgia Press.
Wash your face in the
Little Pigeon River above where the trail crosses and understand that men and
women have made ablutions here for ten thousand years, that this was the way
from the north across the mountains toward Kitu'hwa
in war and peace, that this place was known to the Shawnee and the Iroquois
and the Lenape in the days when men thought nothing of walking from the Great
Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, Dug into that silver water, your forearms will
ache with the cold of all the winters here; you will feel in the bones of your
hands what the roots of spruce and fir feel,
what the fractured surface of the
Anakeesta outcrops feel when nothing is here except the bear and the raven, the wolf and the owl.
Walk in the woods where
you can, slowly and irregularly, like an animal, Pretend you are a bear. Stop
often. Flip stones: move logs aside. Tilt your head to hear. Growl and sniff
the air. Unfocus your eyes to see. Let your thoughts melt toward metaphor. Stop
thinking in words. Embrace the old taxonomy. savoring what is animate and
inanimate, what is flexible and stiff, what is long and what is short. what is
liquid and solid, what is round or unlike anything else. Enjoy the broadness of
life so organized -- the sanity of the tangible -- and mark its details well.
There is very little left of the original world, and the possibility of
preserving what remains has passed. Nothing has escaped the contact. If the old
Cherokee had not buried time itself here -- had not seen and saved the great
animals that live inside these mountains waiting for this troublesome
interglacial to end -- we would have nothing to look at and think about.
