- How We Love
You were not one for blossoming things blushed at the will of the weather,
no profusion of color to fill a vase or press in a book. Your passion
was burgeoning fruit and nut trees, arches of branches sticky with burrs,
leathery shells of delicate fuzz— how you reveled in texture and form!
I think of you when walking a path knotty with hulls or fallen fruit,
trees bent over in season. I wish you could see I am not so much
ornamental as something of use— a vessel, a tool, food on the table.
And like any harvest part of my crop is riddled with spots and worms. [End Page 172]
Phyllis Price contributed eleven poems to Appalachian Heritage from 1985 to 1991. At that time she resided at Stone Mountain, Georgia.