Eater’s Almanac is our weekly newsletter for the Huss Project Farmer’s Market. You can receive a print copy each week at the market, which includes a recipe for seasonal vegetables!
Below is an excerpt of the poem “From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee, which we first encountered in the excellent collection of food poems called The Hungry Ear, edited by Kevin Young. It’s impossible not to think of it when peach season comes round, and its heartbreakingly beautiful last stanza is even more poignant in these painful times. From Rose, Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee.
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.