Nature as Church
The Seeds of a Great Choir
(to MaryAnn and Bessie)
don’tcha just love
how a row of seed cones
on a branch is a church choir,
ever’ sunday mornin’
gettin’ ready to give each voice
a way to rejoice?
lined up hip to hip
in the church of the hackmatack
here in this tiny borough,
borough of larch, don’tcha know?
sure, sure,
the church is just a branch church
not near so big as the mother conifer
up the way.
still and all it has
a growin’ choir
—new members ever’ year!
and that’s not nothin’ here,
not by a long shot i tell you what.
look how the sunlight dances
right through the chancel today
lightin’ up them singers,
not ever’ one mind you,
but ever’one’s ‘n angel
just the same.
they warm up, throats
kinda raspy at first
kinda dry, but even
they scales let you know
hands down
you wanna be payin’ mind.
they bump each other gentle-kind
as they tug they robes
pat they hair in place
help someone with a bobby pin.
then they sing they hymns
for the service
swayin’ together
in the breezy mornin’,
breezy mornin’ carryin’
they voices proud’s can be
and seeds too, seeds too.
the notes they sing, honey,
they be seeds that drop and grow
drop and grow. while
preacher offers up the homily,
two them singers
lean t’each other
whisper whisper
maybe gossip
maybe braggin’ on they kids
big ol’ smiles on they faces
as they stand in they places
shinin’ bright
and don’tcha know
at coffee hour
gladys asks
can she join the choir?
i love my church!
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3 x 3″; watercolor on paper
card #15 in a series of color swatches
2025
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Notes on poem and art:
• “The Seeds” has two points of origin—(1) a prompt from the Coursera poetry class I took in June: You Are So Conceited: When A Metaphor Isn’t Tough Enough—When there’s a big gap between the object of the metaphor and its figure, you need to convince your reader of the validity of your metaphor. You need a conceit. A conceit is like an extended metaphor, but it argues for the metaphor itself. “The Seeds” is my foray into extended metaphor arguing for itself. (2) A photo posted by MaryAnn Shupe at her blog gave me the particular metaphor I wanted to play with: a row of little seed cones growing on a hackmatack branch flipped a switch in my imagination!
• The challenge with Early was the four o’clocks themselves: the blossoms close during the day, not opening until late afternoon, typically around 4 p.m. or so—ours even later—and remaining open only until morning. I picked two blossoms early early one morning and hoped they’d stay open long enough for me to paint my swatches and photograph them. They did!
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