How green was my kitchen
Deen, Rosemary
How green was my kitchen ROSEMARY DEEN ' e need to sense green life. Especially in the winter. When I come home from my evening class then, I pause by the kitchen counter at my collection...
...The stream gradually grew a little bigger, supported a few water fowl and a few fish...
...But it's the dialectics of poise not of struggle or heroism...
...We wandered through old rooms...
...The houses appeared remote in the watery air, but in the garden of one I saw a woman with an umbrella picking lettuces...
...he replied...
...he says, plucking them out and placing them greenly in my hand...
...Saint Cross turned out to be an old, small, empty monastery...
...The green of the water grasses seemed simply expressed into the green rain above them...
...The plants you free gain ground and their own greenness...
...In the train on the way back to London, as I got out the extra pair of dry socks I always carried in England, I felt it had been a satisfying day...
...They articulate themselves more, up there in the light...
...Occasionally we saw a house with its own small bridge over the stream and its own locked bridge gate—though the stream was hardly a barrier and could be stepped across easily...
...There was no one about, and no other world than this...
...Heaven...
...Once in the south of England, during a June vacation of almost constant rain, Leonard and I found ourselves back of Winchester Cathedral looking at a sign that said, "Water meadow walk to Saint Cross...
...We hadn't the temerity to ask...
...I feel it in some somatic core, as you feel clear water quench a serious thirst...
...A few weeds have got a nice green start, and you sit down to pull them out, one by one: root—hairy and delicate, still clinging to the good soil—stem, and greeny leaves...
...this is not true...
...Our feet wet on the path, our heads wet in the green watery air, it was hard to tell the one water from the other...
...it's simply the sensation of green...
...We set out along a single-person path beside a small stream flowing clearly over light brown gravel through what was presumably the water meadow...
...The grass was over our heads...
...The oriole keeps up his alwaysincomplete assertion...
...I mean the green one is offered in wall paint, rugs, sofas, and dress goods...
...There were a few tools and kitchen implements, but mostly the rooms were filled simply with Corot light, watery and clear...
...You're not laboring at something to get it over with, but acting on each part with the energizing patience of green...
...but you're enjoying the dumbness of the simple, single green...
...Green, as it happens, is my most unfavorite color...
...Then we went back through the green water meadow as we had come...
...An hour...
...Do you ask for it...
...I was just looking at the plants...
...Until we saw the sign we hadn't known we wanted to go to Saint Cross, whatever that was...
...It's a dialectical oneness, of course, because you're sorting out and throwing away: "This is true...
...D Rosemary Deen teaches at Queens College...
...You are one with the weeds not with your plants now...
...I asked...
...If green is your most unfavorite color, then why are there leaves growing in your hair...
...It discomforts me...
...Leonard realized this was the Itchen, whose stained-glass image we had just seen in the Silksteed chapel with Isaak Walton sitting pensively by the banks where we walked now...
...You're down in the green, tranquil and balanced...
...But it isn't wonders that keep me there...
...all the cattle of the sun couldn't have consumed it...
...When I come home from my evening class then, I pause by the kitchen counter at my collection of small plants under a long plant light...
...Of course there are nongreen places in the great world, where sky and air are everything, or rock and height...
...It was a world of never-ending grass...
...She has a green thumb and is Commonweal's poetry editor...
...The weed green passes into your hands and into your soma...
...The usual gentle rain was falling...
...says Leonard Deen when I come into the living room...
...One mile...
...In a homemade Wardian case the leaf of a fancy begonia sprouts tiny new plants from each cut in the leaf vein...
...And there are greener worlds than mine which may be almost enough to satisfy the need for green...
...I'm surprised...
...Its attendant asked us whether we required bread and ale after our journey, as he was bound to give it to travelers who asked for it...
...What have you been doing in the kitchen for the past hour...
...When we left, the attendant was gone, but I noticed a sign on the desk which said his name was Mr...
...Leisurely summer weeding gives the same pleasure of purely touching green...
...You go out to some morning-shaded spot, perhaps with your morning cup in hand...
...Do you really give it...
...I set my book bag down and gaze at the button fern, refined and sturdy, the maidenhair uncoiling green curls from its satisfying, wirey black stem...
...Leonard pretends to find this amusing as he sees me come in from one of my watering forays into the tomato plants growing higher than my head...
...What you do will not be undone in the next twenty minutes...
Vol. 121 • June 1994 • No. 12
