‘Peach season prevails despite winter storm.’
Peaches at the farmers market.
That was a recent headline in our local paper. Since moving to peach country, I’ve learned peaches need a certain number of chill hours to become sweet. This winter our peaches got more than double the average chill hours. Now the Peaches signs are out, and many a teen too young to get a proper job is working in the shade, selling bags or baskets of peaches. Shortly after my dad moved next door in May 2018, he bought two bags — one for him, one for us. I used mine to make his favorite desert, peach cobbler.
Peach season here lasts from May to September. My dad lived next door to me for two and a half years — beginning one May and ending one September — so I like to think of his brief sojourn here as peach season. So it seemed appropriate to learn Li-Young Lee’s “From Blossoms” By Heart.
From Blossoms
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.
– Li-Young Lee
The poem takes us through a life cycle, word by word. Beginning with “blossoms,” extending into the moment we “hold / the fruit in our hands, adore it,” and ending with those blessed days when death is “nowhere / in the background.” I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed learning a poem more.
Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese exiles. They fled to Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, and eventually to the United States, where they were granted asylum. His father, who served as personal physician to Mao Zedong, attended seminary in Pennsylvania and became a Presbyterian minister. His mother? It seems she kept the family together, peach by peach.
In April I participated in a Zoom chat hosted by the University of Kentucky and led by Lee. He reads quietly, emphasizing each pause. “I love the silences. I love the quiet,” he said. “If I read the way I wanted to, I would either sing or there would be longer pauses.”
Oh, that is why this poem sings!
One of the great moments in the musical Hamilton concerns a comma. Behold, the power of grammar to bring fullness to our lives and sweetness to our communication! A similarly powerful comma occurs at the end of Lee’s poem. If commas are traditionally a place to pause, and if we know Lee likes pauses, then read the poem’s last line with the comma-pause intended:
[…] from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Inhale. Don’t rush that ending. Draw strength from your diaphragm and exhale that final sweet impossible blossom into life.
I wasn’t sure I wanted my dad to live next door to me, wasn’t sure I dared to eat that peach, to let come all that dust Lee describes. But O, I did “take what [I] love inside.” And now I “carry within [me] an orchard.”
https://soundcloud.com/megan-willome/from-blossoms-by-li-young-lee
By Heart for July
For the next By Heart gathering, July 16, I’ll share my journey from resisting poetry memorization to loving it.
Photo by Nathalie, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.
Browse more By Heart
I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”
—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro
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L.L. Barkat says
This was great: “It seems she kept the family together, peach by peach.”
Could make a good poetry prompt, too. “Write something about someone keeping something together ______ by ______ .”
I really, really liked your audio for this. You did just what you suggested (based on Lee and Weinstein), to beautiful effect!
Megan Willome says
It was only in the last days of learning the poem that I noticed that last comma. That’s why it’s good to have a month with each By Heart poem
Bethany R. says
Beautifully put, Megan, I love this post. Thank you.
Megan Willome says
So glad you got to hear Li-Young Lee too!