Poetry Friday: "as if death were nowhere in the background"

The cholera epidemic continues, and gets worse, and yet in the midst of it all there are many moments that are beautiful and filled with joy - joy in my family, my friends, my students. I almost feel guilty for being happy when so many are miserable, but I know that these days are to be seized.

So while it's a day of suffering in Port-au-Prince, it's also, in a strange way, a good day for a poem about peaches.

"From Blossoms," by Li-Young Lee, ends this way:

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.


You can read the whole thing here.

Death is always, always somewhere in the background. Except when it's in the foreground. And yet life is filled with so much beauty, so many perfect gifts from God. I'm grateful. "From joy to joy to joy."

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.