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Day 107: Where the Purple Clover Grows

Day 107: Where the Purple Clover Grows

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I know where the purple clover grows.
I walk past it every day:

where the milkweed rises
and the cattails sway;
where monarchs alight
and the field mice play,

I know where the purple clover grows.

It is there I lay my memory,
my goodbyes and hellos,
my wants and wayward wishes,
my invisible cargos.

It is there I whisper to the wind
the stories that are true
and offer up my love songs
in nature’s rendezvous.

It is there the purple clover,
wild and sublime,
takes off my wearied mantle
and removes the pound of time

so I can look without filter
and see without haze
the child i may have been back then
and the woman who was raised –

the loves that live inside,
and the lives I leave behind,
some, who live beside me now,
some, phantoms in my mind –

and there, you all,
and parts of me
do mingle in the grove –
our yesterdays remembered,
our tomorrows, new betrothed.

 

I know where the purple clover grows.

I walk past it every day,

every day.

 

Day107_PurpleClover

Day 106: Zucchini Season

Day 106: Zucchini Season

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’Tis the season for random boxes left outside church doors, with big FREE signs on them, and overflowing with 5 and 6 pound crook-necked zucchini. I am the grateful recipient of one said zucchini as I failed to plant any myself this year.

Now, zucchini should be about a pound (at most) when harvested, or they get pithy and the flavor is not as good. The seeds get to be like pumpkins and the meat gets a weird spongey texture. Not so good to cook with…

BUT!

A huge zucchini still makes a mighty fine bread.

 

This is an original recipe I created to retain the easily lost flavor of zucchini, but still make a sweet morning bread that rocks a cup of coffee like no one’s business. I included pecans and figs to make a hearty texture, and some cardamom and brown sugar to deepen the tastes.

Ingredients:

Day106_Ingredients

  • 1 pound zucchini (trimmed)
  • 2 cups unbleached, all purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon allspice
  • ¾ teaspoon cardamom (not pictured)
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup sugar
  • ¼ cup brown sugar
  • ½ Tablespoon honey
  • 1/8 cup milk (not pictured)
  • 1/8 cup sour cream
  • 2 eggs
  • 6 Tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
  • ½ cup pecans
  • ¾ cup Smyrna figs

 

Preheat your oven to 350°

Grease a 8 ½” x 4 ½”, or 9 ½” x 3 ½” loaf pan and set aside.

Shred the zucchini by quartering the zucchini lengthwise, and grating it crosswise. I cheat and use a grater attachment on a food processor. Time is money.

Day106_Quartered Zucchini

Day106_Shred

Lay a paper towel in the bottom of a colander. Put the zucchini on top and press it down with another paper towel on top. Keep doing this until you get most of the water out. It will still feel wet, which is good, but not weeping. Set it aside.

Day106_Line Colander

Day106_Press out the water

Toast your pecans. Lay the whole pecans on a cookie sheet and bake for 5 minutes at 350° and then broil at 500° (in the middle of the oven) for two minutes. Watch them, they burn quickly. Then set them aside to cool.

Day106_Toasted Pecans

Whisk your flour, soda, powder, salt, cinnamon, allspice, and cardamom in a medium bowl.

Day106_Dry Ingredients

In your mixing bowl, combine your sugars, melted butter, eggs, milk, sour cream and honey.

Day106_Wet Ingredients

and mix until they’re thoroughly combined.

Day106_Mix

Gently fold in the flour mixture and the zucchini to the egg mixture. Don’t over mix this, just fold.

Day106_Fold

Day106_Folded

Chop your figs and nuts and fold those in.

Day106_Fold Pecans & Figs

Scrape the batter into your pan

Day106_Batter

and bake at 350° for an hour. Check it by inserting a metal skewer (or a knife) after baking. It should come out clean or with a few crumbs. If the batter is still wet, give it another 10 minutes and then check it every 2 minutes thereafter.

Day106_FreshBaked

This is SO GOOD! Thank you church ladies, for your overgrown, wayward zucchini, thank you.

 

 

Day 105: Seconds Spent

Day 105: Seconds Spent

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There was not enough time

in that embrace

and it didn’t matter how tightly

or loosely

We held it;

the seconds spent too quickly

and back to life –

relentless mover –

away

and on.

 

It was a dream

that fades too fast after waking –

exits brought by open eyes –

and my scramble searching mind

like a child, lost at a park,

tries to recall

the feel of muscle ‘neath material,

and see the simultaneous synapse of gaze,

delving down,

past the black, glass pools of our selves,

to the place our memory is kept,

and where the spirit seeps out,

and into one another.

 

did we

did we even look at each other?

did we even see

how we are

who we are

now?

 

Give me minutes please,

to reach and to savor

what the heart missed in those seconds as they were spent.

 

It is the currency of life –
the present, ever-fading –

 

here
so swiftly
and gone
even faster.

 

Day105_Embrace

 

 

Day 104: Blind Mama

Day 104: Blind Mama

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I saw her like you see a shooting star;
something moving out of context with the rest,
breaking the cadence built around her,
and shining brighter,
and trailing longer,
and absolutely impossible to take your eyes off of.

 

Blonde hair, braided neatly,
brown paper bag and groceries inside,
steady pace and sturdy,
with her ruddy babe along for the ride.

 

A child of three,
telling all that he saw,
strapped to her back
in the catbird seat;
high and connected
to the sway of her gate
and the snap of her feet.

 

He reported with his eyes what hers could not see

as her long, white cane kept meticulous beat.

 

Though my eyes could move and follow them walking,
my other else froze:
I stopped planning, stopped talking.

 

And I saw.

 

My mother, me,
our mother’s before us,
in blindness we carry
and join the deep chorus
that sings for the children
we heave to our backs;
pray fate will atone
for all that we lack.
We bear our sweet poundage
with industrious might
and lead to tomorrow
though we step without sight.

 

Today, on the street,
my heart ached and took flight
‘cause I saw two shooting stars
in broad daylight.

 

Day104_BlindMama

Day 103: Revision

Day 103: Revision

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Version One:

I’m stuck in traffic.
I’ve moved two feet in five minutes.
Construction is everywhere and nothing looks better built.
It’s raining.
Is that hail?
What’s the best detour?
Can I bypass this madness?
this congestion?
this maze?
Totally. Stuck.
Argh and blech.

 

Version Two:

Pull back the shade.
Look up.

Day103_LookUp

 

Take note.
Touch.

 

Cold glass jolted my fingers awake;
they remembered what I’d forgot –
being focused on gridlocks and bottlenecks
and the signs that perpetually re-route –
and ignited the rest of my senses like dominos in decline
up and down my spine.

First kisses,
near misses,
motorbikes,
and tangled kites,
tadpoles and key lime rind
flashed like photos in my mind –
electrified and changed –
though nothing’d rearranged

look up

look up

look up.

In whatever the mess, look up.

Day 102: The Benefits of Fog

Day 102: The Benefits of Fog

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I walked past dusk,
when the light of the day wilted
behind tree line and field edge
and the whole earth turned to blue haze.

The heat that was still in the ground,
still in the leaf,
still in me,
came out –
little engines in us, all –
to confront the cold in the new, night air;
and our contrary meeting plunged us all into fog.

In the valleys of straight paths, this fog settled and laid,
my stalled pace stopped sound;
No rock turned under my toe.

There, a little lost, disoriented and strange,
a smile that could not be seen, was spread.

The benefits of fog came on me like breath –

You cannot see with the eye.
You can fathom with the mind.
You can wonder with the heart.
but you must choose:
fill with doubt and alarm?
or peace and resolution?
strain to make shapes out of shadows?
or sense the shape of yourself within them?

 

In small spaces of still, grey air,

there is only you;

to be content in

or to fear.

 

Day102_Fog

Day 101: Audience Participation

Day 101: Audience Participation

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I’m currently part of a local theatre crawl wherein 160+ different shows perform 5 times in one week, at various times, and audiences hop from venue to venue, seeing as much as they can (or want) in a day. It’s an amazing, energetic, surge of creative force, going off in every direction, and taking as many travelers along for the ride as it possibly can.

Though I’m also an artistic member, I jump on board the “audience train” whenever I’m able. And every time I leave one theater to scurry off to the next, my admiration not only grows for the brave souls who throw their ideas and instincts onto the stage, but even more so, for the audience.

It’s not until we –
performer and viewer –
writer and reader –
note singer and ear bearer –

share breath in small black boxes,

experiencing the same moments of
relief,
humor,
pain,
fear,
confusion,
joy,
and sometimes
resolution,

that our experience becomes complete.

 

The audience becomes a character of equal importance, whose generosity is wrapped in their desire to be entertained along with this strange, secret quality that is too often disguised in every day life: the absolute certainty that we all want each other to succeed.

Not one audience member sits down thinking, “I hope this is awful….”

We approach our seats having purchased the benefit of the doubt with the ticket price.

I go to sleep tonight with this sentiment ringing in my ears:

Take the stage.
Tell your tale.
Love the lines you’ve been given
and the role you get to play,
and breathe with me.
I’ll be clapping in the black
and weeping in the blue
and all the while rooting
for the story told through you.

 

Day101_AudienceParticipation

Day 100: To Whom it May Concern

Day 100: To Whom it May Concern

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TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

First, allow me to say “thank you” for including me in your creation. You’ve really done a spectacular job with the universe and cosmos, etc. I enjoy your work very much. Great attention to detail!

Second, after many years of deliberation, I am happy to notify you that I would very much like to accept the position you have offered me, here on planet Earth. In so doing, I consent to enter the current, the dance, and the flux, of all things eternal and never ending, that you have set in motion so many days ago.

Thirdly, I’d like to discuss some desirable work habits/environments to maximize my efficacy while I remain in your employment:

1) I’d like, please, to be defined by you
and what you do through me.

2) I’d like, please, to forego the definitions assigned to me
by those who see and assess,
by those who read and decide,
by those who think and know
what tidy boxes I’d best belong in,
and let those definitions be forgot for a time

and then forever.

3) I’d like, please, to have your approval
more than that of the organizations who market you
or the men and women who say they know you better
than I do –

and maybe they do –

maybe.

 

Lastly, as I consider my long term goals within your workforce, I’d like to summarize my hope via observation of another of your fine creations:

When I watch your reeds of wheat in the field,
they do not fight over the terrain,
they do not choke each other out,
or declare their grain superior to the rest.
They grow
and bend
and sway
in unison
and separate,
on strong stalk
and gentle,
created
to reach,
to seed,
to stretch into
the season of harvest
when, in new form,
they feed,
they nourish,
they give into life
and life through them does give.

 

In Gratitude,
and Sincerely Signed,

one who is beginning to reach

 

Day100_Wheat Field

Day 99: The Sycamore

Day 99: The Sycamore

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I had the pleasure of attending a friend’s wedding this weekend. It was a black tie affair. We were dressed to the nine’s. Rhinestones sparkled and black silk shone. Glasses clinked and the sound of knives hitting China punctuated the conversations of new acquaintances.

The irony was not lost on me then, when (during the ceremony) the officiant read this poem by Wendell Berry….

 

The Sycamore

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
Hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark face.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

~Wendell Berry

 

The officiant went on to relate that Sycamore to a marriage. That within such a creature, no perfection is attained, but rather imperfection weathered.

While I understood his metaphor, and appreciated it’s sentiment, I couldn’t help but think of every person in that room as their own separate Sycamore:
Dressed up
and disguising
the places where our barks were burned,
where the fences were, and are no more,
jewels masking the places that nails once drove in,
and the peace that comes when you hear, and hear again, the line,

“it has gathered all accidents into its purpose.”

 

we grow
we scar
we grow again
and stronger
deeper in root
and wrinkled in face
and bearing sweeter fruit thereon.

Day99_Sycamore's Gap

Day 98: Happy

Day 98: Happy

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On the days you wake up
by a breeze,
and nothing hurts,
and autumn’s calm cool
collects in a pool
in the middle of summer,

and sometime in between
a brief, fat-drop sprinkle
and sun’s brilliant return,
you run out and collect as much color as you can,

these are days –
when witnessed
and present within –

there is no feeling but “happy,”

again, and again, and again.

 

Day98_Collected Color

(the color I collected)

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