Rain

Lichens and Fungi on dead log

The bright color brought me there, subtle beauty kept me, hunkered down, after rains had passed, on the narrow bank beside a tiny creek. This area untouched by the years’ changes, woods to pasture to scrub. Intact land, preserved as all around it lost to agriculture—these small plots still stand, saved because they could not serve.

White Trillium, Trillium grandiflorum

In air dripping with the sweetness of fruit blossoms, more wildflowers, natives here, beneath the old trees marking the small creek’s path.
Nodding beneath the heavy droplets,
their broad leaves drinking in spring.
While toads add their voices, each to the growing trill, the melancholy chords, build in a distant pond.

White Trillium
The Ohio State Wild Flower

I pass a neighbor’s yard, each evening, as I walk down our lane. His woods, old like mine, now raked bare, piles burned, the dark earth turned and prepared to seed—grass.
And I wonder if he has chosen to rid the banks of these old beauties,
or if he has not seen them as I have--
on a dim morning, drinking in the spring rain.

Mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum

Mayapple, not yet unfurled