The annual Cahaba Lily Festival is going on, but we caught the first blooms last week. According to locals, the Cahaba Lily blooms between Mother's Day and Father's day every year. We visited the stands with Heather and Mike on Mother's Day- the earliest moment.
And then again, the next day, with Sanda.
As Sanda and the girls collected shells, I allowed myself to wonder about the rocks- how many years of water flowing in one particular motion left a soft curve in a rock? How many years does it take to fashion a hip from stone?
Pinka watched and yipped. Notice the beautiful shape of the rock to her right.
The remains of some human's feast dried on a rock. I love the heaviness of crustacean coverings. How they resemble bones.
Prophet found several pieces of coal which she used to write her name on the rocks.
Our impulse to leave something behind. A name. A skeleton. The beginnings of a history.
Meanwhile, the fungi grow un-occluded. As with all forms of life, a fungus sprouts under very specific conditions. The context must be ripe.
Gnome used an old plastic egg to collect her shells. She noted the shells were the same kind they gave you in the Indian village at CHOM. And the rocks were the same sort of rocks you rubbed the shells against to make a hole for your necklace.
Prophet's turtle shell.
A bird fishes near a lily stand.
The latest issue of december has a small, short, unnamed poem by Albert Goldbarth on page 89. The poem stuck in my head like a talisman.
The grasses bend
and, cutting them, the man
bends too.
Be careful.
We become what we do.
It's certainly not Goldbarth's usual taste and feel. More Vonnegut or Gary Snyder. But compelling in its brevity and the warning. But sticky. Like sand on the soles of driving barefoot.
We cannot escape the soil which makes us.
