Arboretum Diary

"The following year, almost to the day, I enter the pinewoods and remember the nighthawk just in time – in time to be cautious and silent. And the bird is there, in the same tree, on the same limb, in the pinewoods that is so pretty and so restful, apparently, to both of us." – Oliver, "September"










July

And what do I know of prairie? The growth of rock candy goldenrod gently shifting next to the dogwood might have grown a foot in the last month.  In passing, Bluebird house looks empty. At the edge of the Aster, Coneflower, the Susan Black-eyed, by afternoon, when the long-legs of visitors phase away, does motherbird arrive with a beak laced by short roots for bedding? I know of the Michigan Lily. That it is a tepals 6, a 3-chambered ovary is scientifically divine. That it is alone among the bluestem a red ribbon as if tied and that when I say it the tongue is comfortable is a feel of lily already born inside the mind the texture of silk. That this picture could come undone at any moment, unwind as if from some first garden to roll off the lips like a breath is prairie.