never not noticing
Shopping at the grocery store for my Christmas meal; while I went with the asparagus, I couldn't help pausing over the green beans and remembering a sunny day spent meandering through a garden, snapping off beans as I went, furtively eating the beans like candy . Thanks Mary Oliver, you always make things more lovely. "Beans " They’re not like peaches or squash. Plumpness isn’t for them. They like being lean, as if for the narrow path. The beans themselves sit qui- etly inside their green pods. In- stinctively one picks with care, never tearing down the fine vine, never not noticing their crisp bod- ies, or feeling their willingness for the pot, for the fire. I have thought sometimes that something –I can’t name it — watches as I walk the rows, accept- ing the gift of their lives to assist mine. I know what you think: this is fool- iciness. They’re only vegetables. Even the blossoms with which they begin are small and ...