All About Joy

Today’s blog post is simply

All About Joy —

from the joy I feel when I am making photographs to the joy of seeing spring finally unfurling it’s flowers and leaves, myriad shades of green, and pops of color in early blooming flowers.

I’m still floating from seeing magnolias and wildflowers yesterday at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. This morning I reviewed the rest of the photos I made yesterday and picked out more of them to work on. There were more than is sensible to post in a single blog post.

But I don’t care! I’m so happy seeing the beauty all around that I just plan to share it here today. It’s a perfect day to share one of my favorite poems that I’m sure I’ve shared before.

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy
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