Tulips Like Lustrous Old Porcelain
April 22, 2014
Ice Armor
January 10, 2013
“Every leaf and twig was this morning covered with a sparkling ice armor; even the grasses in exposed fields were hung with innumerable diamond pendants, which jingled merrily when brushed by the foot of the traveller. It was literally the wreck of jewels and the crash of gems.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Journals, January 21, 1838
I remember ice storms from my childhood in Minnesota — every tree, branch and twig was coated in a clear shield of ice. Too bright for unprotected eyes. Precarious footing. And yes, merry tinkling when the shards of ice fell down.
These frosty January mornings in Seattle are a less piercing pleasure — no crashing crystals, just a silent icy edging. Here are some photos of this magical world:
The Skyrocket Trajectory of Sunflowers
July 17, 2012
In the Community Garden
by Mark Doty
It’s almost over now,
late summer’s accomplishment,
and I can stand face to face
with this music,
eye to seed-paved eye
with the sunflower’s architecture:
such muscular leaves,
the thick stems surge.
Though some are still
shining confident,
others can barely
hold their heads up;
their great leaves wrap the stalks
like lowered shields. This one
shrugs its shoulders;
this one’s in a rush
to be nothing but form.
Even at their zenith,
you could see beneath the gold
the end they’d come to.
So what’s the use of elegy?
If their work
is this skyrocket passage
through the world,
is it mine to lament them?
Do you think they’d want
to bloom forever?
It’s the trajectory they desire —
believe me, they do
desire, you could say they are
one intent, finally,
to be this leaping
green, this bronze haze
bending down. How could they stand
apart from themselves
and regret their passing,
when they are a field
of lifting and bowing faces,
faces ringed in flames?
Roses and the Huge Willingness to Give
July 3, 2012
“every rose
opened in perfect sweetness
and lived
in gracious repose,
in its own exotic fragrance,
in its huge willingness to give
something, from its small self,
to the entirety of the world.”
— from “The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts” by Mary Oliver
You can read the entire poem at this link.
Souls in Bloom
June 22, 2012
“Summer: to be for a few days the contemporary of roses; to breathe what’s floating around their souls in bloom.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
How lucky we are to be alive in June, the contemporaries and companions of roses! This time I am air-drying a bowlful of soulful rose petals so that their special beauty will linger into fall and winter.
Tree-Watching: Dogwood and Interlocking Petal Puzzles
June 13, 2012
The Kousa dogwood trees are blooming so profusely, the four-petaled bracts overlap like interlocking puzzle pieces.
Consider the Petal
April 7, 2012
“It is at the edge of a petal
that love waits.”
— William Carlos Williams
“The height of the beauty of a bloom is its folded state, rather than when it’s fully opened.”
— Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden
Which do you prefer — the unopened bud or the unfolded blossom?
Faded Beauty
April 30, 2010
“The flowers anew, returning seasons bring,
But faded beauty has no second spring.”
— Ambrose Phillips
The tulips are losing their sprightliness; many have lost their petals. Beauty fades. Can we let it go without regret?
“Beauty’s a doubtful good, a glass, a flower,
Lost, faded, brown, dead within an hour;
And beauty, blemish’d once, forever’s lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.”
— William Shakespeare