Sitting with the Cabbages

 Here's a poem I wrote when my daughters were little, our family living on a mountain ridge in the Black Mountains of North Carolina. 


Sitting with the Cabbages


It happened at dusk one summer evening,

  resting on the soft grass

  in the margin between garden and lane,

  my children quietly playing in the distance.


During the day

  I weeded this garden,

  hoeing, tending.


Now, during shimmering moments 

  between day and night,

  I sit at the feet of cabbages,

  strong green leaves stretching upward,

  radiant in the subdued light.


What is this intoxicating influence

  that leaves me rapt and motionless?

  I sit in still-point,

  boundaries blurring,

  feeling my breath,

  in and out,

  as if we all, 

  plant, tree, human,

  are being breathed by something larger.


For many moments, or maybe only a few,

  I forget who I am,

  held in an invisible 

  web of all that is.


And then (can I believe my eyes?)

  the cabbages begin to glow.


Nan Fawcett

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