Going with the flow?

First things first. Along the back roads to pick up this week's community supported agriculture [CSA] share, we saw a handful of deer, including one buck in velvet and a mostly grown fawn who dashed across the road in front of us after I had slowed the Jeep. Apparently no one has explained to the deer they aren’t supposed to be standing at the edge of a road or in the middle of a soy bean field at 8:45 am in a sunny Saturday morning, even if they’re in a rural area near the St. Croix River.

Sunrise River flowing into the St. Croix

Photo by J. Harrington

Here’s what we picked up once we got to the farm:

• Tomatoes
• Green Tower Lettuce
• Green Bell Pepper
• Summer squash 
• Bulb onion
• Parsley 
• Genovese Basil

I'm grateful there was no zucchini included, although the Better Half did a great job hiding the last batch in a spicy veggie sauce for our dinner of shrimp and grits the other night. I suspect the green peppers will show up in tomorrow’s stuffed peppers dinner. I’n not really against veggies, I just don’t want to overdo a good thing. ; >)

Last evening we watched a PBS segment on Ada Limón’s poet laureate project on poetry in the parks. It was a treat to see her and the effort National Park Service is putting into the project. We could use more of this kind of project. I join with Michael Garrigan who "strongly believes that every watershed should have a Poet Laureate.” That could take more than 80 poet laureates for Minnesota river basins. How can we make that happen?

Michael Garrigan

The River, a Mouth

We walk the river’s jaw
along its curved bone ledges,
long palates growing eelgrass,
spooking baitfish and bass, to the dam.

Rusty crayfish flick through
summer teeth slick boulders as we slip
the weight of our bodies becomes buoyant
and we float until our boots touch bottom.

Lightning bugs splatter
shorelines as storms split us in two.
Rain downstream, lightning upstream,
dam at our back, we are halves of all we held.

We wade deeper into the dark
our feet become a bed of pebbles
our legs tooth roots buried in bone
our waists eddies, our chest hair - hibiscus.

We follow the river’s tongue
down its throat into its lungs
and feel the crack of thunder choking
our names in the language of water and rock.

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