In case it appears all I write about is poetry, let me say something about food. It has been sneaking lately into my writing, which isn't surprising since eating locally grown food has become increasingly important to me on many levels. Eating locally grown food and growing some of one's own have a lot to do with sustainability and living slowly, and of being intricately connected to nature. Nature is where my poetry grows from - the rivers, mountains and forests of the Adirondacks, Vermont, and sometimes northern Quebec, Iceland or Scotland. So it seems natural that food grown in these places should start appearing in my lines of verse.

I have been growing a few things of my own this summer: tomatoes, cucumbers, kale, eggplant, and lots of herbs. The rest we buy fresh from local farms. Eating something that you know has been picked that morning is a magical and complete sensory experience. The nutrients and flavors are so alive in your body, for a moment you forget where you leave off and the earth begins. You forget you are a separate entity walking around. And of course we are not separate from the earth, or each other; we are made of what it is made, nothing different.  

A recent summer inspired poem:

I've never eaten so well, I've never felt this close.

Heirloom tomatoes, tarragon and thyme 

and cheese from goats I might have met. 

I haven't said enough about gratitude, 
for movement of tongue over cantaloupe seed, 

through blend of sweet cream and mint, 

for olive oil trickling into my throat, a kind of thrice blessing.

Only sun and hands have touched these goods.

And I haven't said enough of time. 

Of the time it took to arrive in this moment, 

not more than a blink, yet it feels

a stretch of eternity - the way it runs rivulets 

of sun full over by skin, lets linger long

the taste of earth's fruits on my tongue.

The ecological philosopher Thomas Berry spoke of communication with the earth as a "renewed communication with other beings and other species." This must be why it inspires so much rich poetry and music. Both have been a part of most ancient and tribal cultures, whose people were intimately connected with nature. There is indeed an immediacy of communication that happens (if one is present) when walking a wooded path, drifting down a river, or biting into a just picked peach or pear.

Berry also spoke about "the spontaneities" and of "wildness we might consider as the root of the authentic spontaneities of any being." I love his use of the word spontaneities and while this could be experienced in many settings it seems a likely one is immersion in and amongst the elements from which we came, whether they be earth's waters, wind, and forests, or the stardust from above. It is all about our ongoing co-creation with the universe through our unique expressions of ourselves within it. For now, let that be the fresh grown foods of summer and the dance of the elements inside us.