still

Kudzu does its thing
Green encroachment claiming earth
No one is still home

They sag in just the way I remember, clotting against each other in nests of purple and gold, skins thinning and flesh softening in cracks of sidewalk concrete.  As a child I used to eat them off a tree at the edge of a cotton field, loving them more than wild plums but not as much as blackberries. Their feral sweetness in my throat tickled with its hint of something gone to ruin, something almost too wild to be with. Only once I picked them before they’d ripened, the blister of their greenness sending me home for water in a hurry, my mouth full of trickery and insolence. Some years later I made some jam with them. It sat on my shelf in jars until someone insisted I spread it on toast, and I did. My teeth missed the skins and the nudge of the pit. Wasps still crawl inside their golden hearts, I notice now, intoxicated with loamy fruitflesh and the heady disappearing nourishment of summer.

©Laura Sorrells 2007--2012

all rights reserved

Watching the light in
a summer garden, I notice
how a cathedral of unexpected
geometry reflects its
living heart.
Without everything here,
(and elsewhere)
the improvisation of reverence
would be lost.
What other weather
is there?

©Laura Sorrells 2012
some rights reserved


I wrote this found poem using Nicholas Harberd's book Seed to Seed: the Secret Life of Plants.

the shape of revelation

Here in this bright summer
world of blackberries and river,
a green tumble of sweetness
breathes into a beginning.
Anything can bear
the shape of revelation:
if you listen, the recklessness
of paradise confesses
how it has dreamed your truth,
and you will be ravished by
its wild and happy
mystery.


©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved