Arboretum Diary

"...Then I went to the dunes behind the harbor, where the roses cover the berms and also grow thickly and randomly on the slopes of pale sand, and are lively with bees, and a deep honey-smell, and I lay down." – Mary Oliver, "Roses"










6/16

Today you leave the car along the sidewalk at your home street in the center of the city.  Wallet tucked in cupboard where you might not find it easily. Some water, something to eat, and follow nothing but the wind and water by feet to become what you see.  Where Wingra turns marsh why is that you cannot become cattails stilly marching, the board walk by its sturdy shoulders bounding left and right through peat and tamarack? As the bikers slowly wheel past the Arboretum Drive I know where they are going, past the Wingra Marsh where the swamp oaks have lost their limbs and stand like signposts holding the statue ends of turkey vultures who radar in on the mice burrowing tomorrow's tunnels.

They don't know who I am – shadow of a thought, the walker of a path, the black-eyed susan I have yet to see but is coming along my path at west knoll descending onto Greene Prairie.

Here the butterfly milk weed stands out as host to the narrow trail restoration.  The only of its kinds as far as the eye can see and I can't help but wonder if it too, its marmalade petals stiff and exuberant, has purposefully lost its way in among the oak canopy of the savannah?  Black-capped chickadee asks a series of short questions from a tucked limb, so light, a mere drop upon the bough of waxy leaves.

The sky opens and never has been lost.  Steady, giving.

A temporary planet of spiderwort opens, so close to home that it is just that.