Poem for Tuesday and Honey Festival

From Blossoms
By Li-Young Lee

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.

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I had a fairly quiet Rosh Hashanah, since we did not go to shul (I am between synagogues at the moment, can't bear the huge overcrowded one to which my parents go, don't really want an all-women's Renewal group while I have kids at home). Adam had no school and after he finished his homework in the morning -- the religious holiday did not stop his history teacher from assigning two chapters -- he wanted to go practice driving, so we drove around in the neighborhood for 45 minutes, then he drove me to the co-op and another food store to get vegetarian stuff and desserts (excuse me, "deserts" as the e-mails keep requesting) for his pre-cross country meet spaghetti dinner (only bounced over one curb, heh).

I have reached 2008 in my Upload All My Photos To Flickr project, meaning that all my UK pictures have been posted (don't go looking, everything's locked till I can sort it and decide what's worth making public). Evening TV involved some Monday Night Football, a somewhat overwrought Warehouse 13 redeemed by nice character interaction and terrific guest stars, and now Jon Stewart whom I have sorely missed during the past crazy week, even though I found his DNC coverage underwhelming (the fact that the news has literally been making me nauseous for the past several weeks may have something to do with that). Here are some photos from the Harvest Honey Festival at Patuxent Wildlife Refuge last weekend:

















Also, there is a baby panda at the National Zoo who was born late last night. Yay!