Monday, April 2, 2012

New Food Blessing

We had friends over last night for dinner, which we enjoyed very much. I was happy to read a newly found food blessing before we ate, one I found in the poet Mary Oliver's book The Swan. Here it is:

Beans Green and Yellow

In fall
it is mushrooms
gathered from dampness
under the pines;
in spring
I have known 
the taste of the lamb
full of milk
and spring grass;
today
it is beans green and yellow
and lettuce and basil
from my friends' garden–
how calmly,
as though it were an ordinary thing,
we eat the blessed earth. 

I added the italics to the last 3 lines. I don't know how Mary Oliver would feel about that. 

I will add this poem to my collection of beautiful quotations about soil, earth, dirt. As spring really swings into full gear, I hope you take time to smell the earth as it is warming up and gearing up to give us life again in so many forms. 

Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this lovely poetic grace. And personally, I do like the italicization of the last three lines. You owed it to the author to acknowledge what you had done in that regard, and to credit her for her work.