Ogier gardens

A beauty that I know and love hosted a poetry workshop in the gardens at the local university today. It was a lovely pleine air experience with humans all of whom except for one I had never met before. I’m never fully at ease around new people and this was no exception but I summoned the courage to read aloud a still life poem about grapes I’d written just then in response to a prompt to interact with the fruit she brought and displayed. I was not as brave with the second piece that I’d drafted. Maybe because it felt like a draft. Or maybe because as the shaking subsided from my hands and vocal cords I became more painfully egoistically conscious of myself and how I didn’t fit in and how the words longingly looking back at me from the paper seemed somewhat cacophonous against the backdrop of the sweeter sounds all around. I dunno. 

But I do want to share it. With my worldwide audience of random strangers who meander past my blog (timeless medium of written interaction). And a few instagrammers who will follow the link here.

Cut deep was the call

Here’s the response:

(Cut)

Immediately while she was speaking, asking what deepens or complicates the beauty of this fruit 

(Your fruit)

My mind is cut by the image of the hands that gather these fruits  

Oranges and pears

Pomegranates and grapes 

Specifically in this country 

Especially at this time

Who will gather these fruits 

When they cut off the hands of the harvesters?

Whose hands will stop them from hacking us 

All of us

To pieces

Mine  

Mine?

Mine! 

All of ours so yes also mine 

(Deeper)

I remember the green snappy sour grapes 

Tart and growing in the woods beside my childhood home 

Before

Awareness crept in

A late summer afternoon, I’m part of the woods

Where I was conceived and born and raised 

And loved

And hated

A dream of the fruit itself 

And a nostalgia for that place, those people 

The heavenly scent of honeysuckle wafting all around 

I’m lying on the dirt floor hands digging into the earth

Looking up at the rugged branches of the maples

Marveling at their crown shyness

Almost touching but never quite, gently refusing to violate the other’s space, sweetly whispering compliments across the wind

Reflecting the same image seen in the grapes below  

Clumps of green glinting with the flecks of sunlight 

Holding a symphony of earth’s savors 

There’s a harmony in it and my hands are involved