green, blue, yellow

Lou's garlic

I was leaving my friend Lou's house on a warm rainy night when I mentioned that I should stop for garlic on the way home, envisioning some savory dish for supper.

"Oh!" she said, "We have some in the garden, want some?"

"Of course!" I said, as her husband Bryan started telling me about how mild & tasty it was, how he had it on his pizza the other night.

Meanwhile, Lou ran through the pouring summer rain and returned with the most fascinating garlic bulbs I have ever seen! I wish you could have seen them all glistening with rain, but I did snap a few shots before cooking up an ample bulb for supper...

It is as delicious as it is lovely!

berry season

Blackberry Eating
by Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

I'm sure she does not have red hair.

I have a neighbor
by Rosellen Brown

I have a neighbor
who is always deep
in a book or two.

High tides of clutter
rise in her kitchen.

Which last longer, words,
words in her bent head,
or the clean spaces

between one perfect
dusting and the next?

the splendor of roots

It's the birthday of one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda

from The Book of Questions

by Pablo Neruda Translated by William O'Daly

III. Tell me, is the rose naked or is that her only dress? Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots? Who hears the regrets of the thieving automobile? Is there anything in the world sadder than a train standing in the rain?