Praises

Unknown

Praises



The vegetables please us with their modes and virtues.
                                                                                 The demure heart
Of the lettuce inside its circular court, baroque ear
Of quiet under its rustling house of lace, pleases
Us.
       And the bold strength of the celery, its green Hispanic
!Shout! its exclamatory confetti.

                                                      And the analogue that is Onion:
Ptolemaic astronomy and tearful allegory, the Platonic circles
Of His inexhaustible soul!
                                           O and the straightforwardness
In the labyrinth of Cabbage, the infallible rectitude of Homegrown Mushroom
Under its cone of silence like a papal hat -
                                                                       All these
Please us.

                  And the syllabus of the corn,
                                                                  that wampum,
                                                                                            its golden
Roads leading out of the wigwams of its silky and youthful smoke;
The nobility of the dill, cool in its silences and cathedrals;
Tomatoes five-alarm fires in their musky barrios, peas
Asleep in their cartridge clips
                                                  beetsblood,
                                                                      colonies of the imperial
Cauliflower, and the buddha-like seeds of the pepper
Turning their prayerwheels in the green gloom of their caves.
All these we praise: they please us all ways: these smallest virtues.
All these earth-given;
                                    and the heaven-hung fruit also...

                                                                                          As instance
Banana which continually makes angelic ears out of sour
Purses, or the winy abacus of the holy grape on its cross
Of alcohol, or the peach with its fur like a youg girl's -
All these we praise: the winter in the flesh of the apple, and the sun
Domesticated under the orange's rind.

                                                                       We praise
By the skin of our teeth, Persimmon, and Pawpaw's constant
Affair with gravity, and the proletariat of the pomegranate
Inside its leathery city.

                                      And let us praise all these
As they please us: skin, flesh, flower, and the flowering
Bones of their seeds: from which come orchards: bees: honey:
Flowers, love's language, love, heart's ease, poems, praise.



Thomas McGrath
 
 
I can't help but think of Pablo Neruda. Who else would praise a vegetable so? Well McGrath has taken a stab at it. The thought of a lettuce as a circular court, a house of rustling lace, it does please me. Celery like an exclamation, an onion with its Platonic circles, the labyrinth of cabbage – it doesn't even take a poet to recognize that similarity – but I love “the nobility of the dill, cool in its silences and cathedrals” - that is very very like how I have felt standing next to the dill plant in my mother's garden in the days when it still grew taller than me. “The sun domesticated under the orange's rind”, oh but I have the best painting of that to include here, if only I had the room. Yes, the “green gloom” of the pepper's cave, yes! How pleasing are these? Let us praise them – masterpieces that they are. Is it possible that with practice our praise could be as proficient as Pablo's and McGrath's? I'd like to think so.

Psalm For the January Thaw

Unknown

Psalm For the January Thaw Blessed be God for thaw, for the clear drops that fall, one by one, like clocks ticking, from the icicles along the eaves. For shift and shrinkage, including the soggy gray mess on the deck like an abandoned mattress that has lost its inner spring. For the gurgle of gutters, for snow melting underfoot when I step off the porch. For slush. For the glisten on the sidewalk that only wets the foot sole and doesn't send me slithering. Everything is alert to this melting, the slow flow of it, the declaration of intent, the liquidation. Glory be to God for changes. For bulbs breaking the darkness with their green beaks. For moles and moths and velvet green moss waiting to fill the driveway cracks. For the way the sun pierces the window minutes earlier each day. For earthquakes and tectonic plates-earth's bump and grind-and new mountains pushing up like teeth in a one-year-old. For melodrama— lightning on the sky stage, and the burst of applause that follows. Praise him for day and night, and light switches by the door. For seasons, for cycles and bicycles, for whales and waterspouts, for watersheds and waterfalls and waking and the letter W, for the waxing and waning of weather so that we never get complacent. For all the world, and for the way it twirls on its axis like an exotic dancer. For the north pole and the south pole and the equator and everything between. Luci Shaw She covers it all. "For day and night, and light switches by the door." That one makes me laugh. Too true. I'm full of it today. It wants to spill out. Blessed be God! This is a long list of thanks, and if I add my own, it just gets longer. All I can say is, it's a good day to give thanks.

May 20: Very Early Morning

Erin Hanson

May 20: Very Early Morning

All the field praises him/all

dandelions are his glory/gold

and silver all trilliums unfold

white flames above their trinities

of leaves all wild strawberries

and massed wood violets   reflect his skies–

clean blue and white

all brambles/all oxeyes

all stalks and stems lift to this light

all young windflower bells

tremble on hair

springs for his air’s

carillon touch/last year’s yarrow (raising

brittle star skeletons) tells

age is not past praising

all small low unknown

unnamed weeds show his impossible greens

all grasses sing

tone on clear tone

all mosses spread a spring–

soft velvet for his feet

and by all means

all leaves/buds/all flowers cup

jewels of fire and ice

holding up

to his kind morning heat

a silver sacrifice

now

make of our hearts a field

to raise your praise

Luci Shaw 

I can't get over that "make of our hearts a field". Now here's a poem that makes me instantly happy. Praise is a remarkable thing - it lifts and lightens the person praising, it changes things. Oh I can't even talk about this poem, I love it. 

 

https://soundcloud.com/user-978696454/very-early-morning-luci-shaw