market

by pathwise

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2003-07-23 14:11:00

Parent message is 489136
One of my favorite activities is going to the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings…the place does indeed speak…not just the conversation you hear among friends, neighbors and strangers…but the whole market itself.
The goods for sale (vegetables, fruits, honey, herbs, flowers, breads) speak freshness. Buy a peach and eat it right there and it’ll tell you about hanging from a tree in the sunshine all day long. Buy a pint of honey and you’ll hear the buzzing conversation of the bees that helped make it.
I stop and talk to the musicians who busk all morning long…the man from China playing an instrument that I can’t name, but that sounds like the plaintive cries of a woman weeping on the riverbanks…the young black man who sings so sweetly as he strums his guitar…the cloggers who hoot and holler and pound and turn.
I stop and talk to the Mennonite and Amish farmers who are some of the nicest and most polite folks you’ll ever meet.
I stop and talk to the elderly couple who my wife and I call “grandma and grandpa” and who sell flowers out of their yard…the bouquets aren’t the prettiest, but they are the loveliest.
Those tunes and those eggs and those berries and those tomatoes and those chili peppers and those strands of rosemary, dill and milkweed…ah the conversations we have.