A breath of fresh air
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Southern Blend
John Rittmann
A breath of fresh air
Things are tense right now. I’m sure you all feel it. COVID-19 is making the rounds, we are sending the kids back to school, and the national discourse is just what it always is.
Writing about the Klan is heavy. It’s hard to look at things objectively and still allow the pain caused by such people to breathe and live. To not just inform, but to help us to share in the regret and pain from these things.
I don’t intend to write about so many negative things. That’s been on my mind in this series – where to balance thorough storytelling with brevity.
But that’s a problem for next week. Today, we breathe, we relax, and we prepare for what lies ahead with fresh hearts.
I’d like to share a poem with you. I hope it transports you to a simple, happy place like it does for me.
“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.