Sewanee Sings Peonies

Sewanee's peonies -- white and pink balls of lace -- lounge in dark leafy clumps along street corners, above the wall at the post office parking lot, in tended gardens, in Abbo's Alley. Mary Oliver calls their buds "fists . . . stroke[d]" by the sun's "old, buttery fingers." Now those fists burst into beautiful puffs of color proclaiming spring.

Oh, the peonies and their exuberant "recklessness."