Okay I've tapped into the poetic, spiritual nature of Maple Syrup and found this wonderful piece of writing in Jan Carlsson-Bull's sermon "What's Left". I post it here for your sweet'n'sticky pleasure, remembering that maple syrup is truly a shared "Ameri-Can" blessing ...


"Maple syrup is a "sacred residue" that takes a lot of time and labor and fiscal outlay to produce. Yet it all starts as liquid called to life in a tree. Maple syrup is the sweet residue of a long process, not unlike what we might experience at year's end, not unlike that "distilled sweetness" entering the heart in Seamus Heaney's "… Dream of Solstice."

"Like somebody who sees things when he's dreaming
And after the dream lives with the aftermath
Of what he felt, no other trace remaining.

So I live now, for what I saw departs
And is almost lost, although a distilled sweetness
Still drops from it into my inner heart.

The distilled sweetness, the sacred residue, is what's left after it all."

May this year's "sacred residue" be sweet indeed, on both sides of the border, despite all the bitterness of the last few months!

Peace - daylia