Many things are in abundant supply here on the farm: quail; pocket gophers; gopher snakes to eat the gophers; and of course, the aforementioned kale, now making an appearance at every meal, even breakfast! But glamour, alas, is not one of these things. Not until this morning, however, when former apprentices Daryl, Matthew, and Doron showed up to make our breakfast much more fabulous than usual.
You'd be surprised how much more alluring oatmeal can be when it's spooned into a waiting bowl just for you by a guy in a red feather boa, mardi gras beads, and a kimono jacket. The oatmeal was divided into 3 vats, descriptively labeled "Lumpy", "Smooth but Runny", and "Mortar". Chopped kiwis (from the farm-yes, they grow here, on long vines), walnuts, raisins, and brown sugar were on offer, and even if you'd never had an opinion about oatmeal before, the outfits and ceremony cheered everyone up. And at dinner, there was tempeh mole, tortillas and hot sauce, yellow rice, sauteed kale, even warm vegan chocolate cake.
But what I want even more than lumpy oatmeal and chocolate cake is poetry. Send me your favorite poems! Especially if there's some kind of nature component. Ok, to be honest, a real bed is what I want most, but showering in the outdoor solar shower this afternoon, with the blue sky and green leaves visible above the hot shower spray almost made up for 2 weeks of damp and chilly sleeping on the ground.
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Fame is a fickle food
by Emily Dickinson
Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer's Corn –
Men eat of it and die.
Did someone say they needed a poem? xo Jen
Maybe a few words from Virgil? xo Jen
from First Georgic
by Virgil
Translated by David Ferry
When spring begins and the ice-locked streams begin
To flow down from the snowy hills above
And the clods begin to crumble in the breeze,
The time has come for my groaning ox to drag
My heavy plow across the fields, so that
The plow blade shines as the furrow rubs against it.
Not till the earth has been twice plowed, so twice
Exposed to sun and twice to coolness will
It yield what the farmer prays for; then will the barn
Be full to bursting with the gathered grain,
And yet if the field's unknown and new to us,
Before our plow breaks open the soil at all,
It's necessary to study the ways of the winds
And the changing ways of the skies, and also to know
The history of the planting in that ground,
What crops will prosper there and what will not.
In one place grain grows best, in another, vines;
Another's good for the cultivation of trees;
In still another the grain turns green unbidden.
Okay, I'll leave you w/one more ...
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
by William Butler Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
Yay! thank you so much, Jen! I am indeed living in the bee-loud glade, getting dirty and learning all about tractors and their many accoutrements. I'll be in the city this weekend--some Spicy Bite/Zante pizza possibility??
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