Eric Green: Sap
This poem is from Eric Green's book Some Second-rate Poems, published in 1995 by the Doctor True House Press.
SAP
Like a lot of things in life,
It takes a lot of sap to make syrup.
We hammer a spile into a sugar maple tree,
We wound the ancient trunk and it bleeds,
And that slow drip from the spigot
Gradually fills these pails we then gather.
And the oftener we gather
We tell stories.
We tell stories to make sense of our lives.
We tell stories to communicate our experience of being alive.
We tell stories in our own distinct voice. Our own unique rhythm and tonality.
Transformations is a weekly story-telling column. The stories are written by community members who are my students. Our stories are about family, love, loss and good times. We hope to make you laugh and cry. Maybe we will convince you to tell your stories.
— Kathrin Seitz, editor, and Cheryl Durbas, co-editor
“Everyone, when they get quiet, when they become desperately honest with themselves, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” — Henry Miller
Kathrin Seitz teaches Method Writing in Rockport, New York City and Florida. She can be reached at kathrin@kathrinseitz.com. Cheryl Durbas is a freelance personal assistant in the Midcoast area. She can be reached at cheryldurbas@tidewater.net.
And the sooner we boil
The better is the syrup.
We filter the raw sap,
We skim off the flotsam,
We fire the hot jaws of the stove
Like stokers on a steam locomotive.
We fat the boil to keep down the foam,
We draw new syrup into the test cup,
We attend that moment—219 degrees;
And lord the steam rises,
And how the condensation drips;
And the barn cat stalks first moths,
And walks funny on the sticky cement;
And this hard rain against the tin,
Like the hard boil against the steel,
Takes a good ear to know which;
And the sparks star the darkness
Like something finally freed.
And we stoke,
And we test,
And we talk;
And we talk.
It takes a lot of sap to make syrup.
Eric Green lives on the Maine coast with his wife. He was born in northern New Hampshire, rode freights across the country as a teenager, made his living as a visual artist for 30 years and wrote the award-winning syndicated column, The Penobscot Falcon. His novel LiveCell was published in 2011, and he will be showing his Time Diptych series at the Dowling Walsh Gallery in September.
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