On Tradition
I’ve been thinking a lot about Jericho Brown’s book The Tradition. I am someone who falls in love with book covers first. I fall headfirst for a beautiful book cover before flipping through the text. I love seeing the visual similarities between the photograph of Jericho (left) & the cover (right) of Jericho’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book ✨.
Mother’s Day weekend, one of floral designers’ busy holidays, is rapidly approaching & it’s bringing up a lot of emotions for me. Jericho’s poem, "Foreday in the Morning” has been on my heart all week. Every time I turn back to it a new phrase or word begs me to linger longer—like how grass preserves morning fog by supporting small droplets of water on its spiked spine. This time, this week, I keep landing on one word (a sentence really)—Blue.
Tending is still labor.
What things am I willing to let spill?
Tending is still labor.
Blue. Like Annie Lee.
Tending is still labor.
Blue. Like Annie Lee’s Blue Monday.
Tending is still labor.
And I be… Blue.
I’m unfurling & no one told me how jarring the blinding sunlight would be. No one told me that there was a specific way they wanted me to rise from my resting place—feet first with firmly planted arches suctioning the ground. I know what it feels like to leave things green.
Here is a video of Jericho reading “Foreday in the Morning.” If you wish, you can listen to him read & follow along with the poem. I love listening to him read because you can feel the South in him. I’ve come to learn that the South isn’t always something you hear. However, the South, Southerness is something you can feel someone embody.
I wonder, what it would feel like to both leave things & be green (instead of blue)?
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