Nocturne Cabbage

Susannah Blaxill

Nocturne Cabbage

Cabbages catch at the moon.
It is late summer, no rain, the pack of the soil
cracks open, it is a hard summer.
In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the
leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are
series of little silver waterfalls in the moon.

Carl Sandburg

from "Rainbows are Made"

Cabbages in the moonlight. That’s right. If you don’t think such a thing can be beautiful, you’d be amazed. Cabbages leaves have a strange surface – water droplets bead together on them like translucent pearls, and the feel of them at times is close to that of human skin. And as Carl Sandburg shows us, in certain light they have an unearthly sheen. I love this poem for the way it takes the veil from the commonplace. Cabbages, of all things, beautiful? Oh yes. More than that. Magic.

We are Sitting On a High Green Hill

Jozsef Koszta

We are Sitting On a High Green Hill

and how we got here I cannot tell;

I have a basket and a little flute

which I play to coax the flowers out;

we call each other by quiet secret names

and our clothes are poor but our hair is tame

- we are neither bad nor good

and below us is a dark green wood.

we dream of the big world we cannot enter

and we sit till we silently turn into winter;

the fruit is all gone and our shoes are thin;

by night we lie down to let the darkness in

- it is only by night that I cannot bear

the cold, or the tired clothes we wear.

we dream of the big world we cannot enter

and we have no money and we turn into winter;

when the next spring comes we will melt until

 we run like rivers down the high green hill.

Gwendolyn MacEwan

This poem draws me in, and I don’t know why. I have felt this way, the sense of having been enchanted, like being under a spell that immobilizes me. Not knowing why I am frozen in place, longing to be part of the “big world”, but somehow not having the ability to enter in or join it. This poem makes me think of a tree, too. It’s as if the speaker is both a person and a part of nature. Like a tree is rooted in one place, and the seasons change around it and change it as well – the freezing and melting (which makes me think of water, so when immobile she is like a tree, when melted, like water she can run anywhere).  I don’t know what this poem means, but the questions and images it weaves together feel deeply personal to me. This again is a beautiful mystery – a stranger writes a poem that says what she means, I read it, and recognize something of myself. Maybe people are truly like trees, our roots running underground meet and touch and connect and spark like synapses. Maybe poetry simply follows those sparks.

From Blossoms

Claude Monet

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

"To take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard..."  What a gorgeous image. If only I could, if only that were possible. Can we get something into our heads enough that nothing can shake it out? I'd like to think that on some dark day to come, some future moment of despair I might take the thread in my hand and follow it down twisting trails to this orchard of joy, this reserve of sweetness, this living breathing growing hope for always flowers and fruit. Is that possible? I can only find out if I take what I love inside, if I do some work on this orchard.