Mar

16

From Blossoms

March 16, 2007 | 1 Comment

[-poetry, art-]

by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy
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.

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Published by permission of the author
© 2005 – 2007 Li-Young Lee; all rights reserved
about the poet:
Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. In 1959 his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno’s jails, fled Indonesia with his family. Between 1959 and 1964 the Lee family traveled throughout Hong Kong, Macau and Japan, until arriving in America. His poem, Rose won the New York University’s 1986 Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award and The City In Which I Love You was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Publisher/Contact – BOA Editions Ltd.

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“Blossoms” by Albert Moore

Painting: “Blossoms”
by Albert Moore
painted in 1881, oil on canvas
147.3 X 46.3 (58 X 18 1/4)
This painting is part of the collection of the Tate Gallery – London, England

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also posted in: Poetry , The Original PCQ, 05-06


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. suze on April 23, 2009 5:25 pm

    ummmm…my new BFF (best fruit forever): The Peach.

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