Jul 2
Jul 1
Early summer’s chromatic abundance,
is everywhere,
in wild exuberance;
somewhere there’s a bleak
landscape of grays and browns
that all the bright colors have been
sucked away from and sent here;
all the shades, all the strategies,
to reach towards the sun
luxuriant unfurling
of flower DNA into petals
presenting their organs of generation
to all pollinators,
come up and see me, right now.
May 8
Clematis clings and climbs up its arbor
clutching at the chimlee.
Almost … 
… and all the way open.
Azealia bumper bloom this year, in red.
so red,
and pink,
and whatever color this is
from the new bush down the lawn.
Calycanthus has too many common names:
carolina allspice, strawberry-bush,
sweet bubby, sweet betsy, and spicebush.
Money plant is one common name for a dozen little bushes,
mostly succulents,
that produce some sort of coin shape from the flowers.
This version makes translucent papery discs
later in the summer.
Now it’s purely purple blooms.
Cucumber magnolia flowers,
ten feet to sixty up the tree,
the first bloom are big enough for salad.
Another month, big enough to make a dinner plate.
A new-sprouted dahlia, beginning the long climb
up the flower cage.
Comfrey accidentally thriving in its own
little village of native weeds.
A lovely composition to which our contribution
was the not cutting down.
That time of year has come: riotous abundance, whichever way you look.
Native flame azalea.
The astonishing strategies evolved to propagate as each generation pays forward for the next.
Gerbera daisy.
There’s manipulation, of course — to enlarge flowers or fruits or flavors — bending the wild beginnings. And there’s cultivation — to optimize conditions for growth.
Calycantha (plural?)
When you build a book, the wild world is everything you’ve ever seen, your inventory of images and persons and events. Of course you can make up stuff, if it’s true. The work of writing is to manipulate and cultivate the wild ingredients until you’ve folded them in and teased your new story into being. Your story is from the wild world, but not of it.
Calycanthus.
When you think you’re done, release your story back into the wild to test if it still is true. Probably it needs work. Probably a lot. Rinse, repeat, rejoice.
