I joined my naturalist friend at Bartholomew's Cobble (a cobbled mass of boulders, ledges, old growth trees and a meandering river) this week to see the first hepatica in bloom. We have often sponsored walk/writes where like minded people join us for a relatively silent walk through the woods followed by an hour or so of writing and sharing. This day it was just the two of us, our cameras and our notebooks. Here's what came of it all:
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| Pink, blue, purple or white petals spring from a nest of leathery, three-lobed leaves. The hepatica is a member of the buttercup family and is one of the first flowers to bloom at the Cobble. |
Hepatica at the Cobble
The merest hint
of spring brings them out
like small children bursting
from a winter-weary house.
Out of the dark into the light
wearing only leaf scraps
of clothing and flower petals
round their heads,
they clamber over rocks
and peer down the wooded hillsides
to the wandering river
or lean back to stare, yellow-eyed
at the blue bowl of sky.
How such a small, green, growing thing
can move the weighted earth,
how blooms so delicate, so barely visible,
can reach and swell the human heart
is on of the world's
finest miracles.
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| Hepatica's eye-view of the river from it's home ledge. |
8 comments:
Love the whimsy and thoughtfulness of this poem. You see to have captured the plant. Did others do as well?
ah it def brightens my mood to see the small touches of spring come alive and poke their heads out....new life!
Out of the whole wide world the hepatica is my favorite flower. It's the flower of my childhood spring times in rural Wisconsin.
A sure sign of spring, lovely verse to share of a gorgeous bloom.
Could I come on the next walk? This is so much the sort of thing I do.
Camera, notebook, and a pair of walking shoes: suddenly, the whole world is yours for the taking!
you have captured the very sweetness of spring with this lovely poem.
I love your poem! Perfect capture of the magic of spring!
Tabor - Tammis writes in an entirely different manner but her nature captures are wonderful!
Brian - those little flowers are at once so delicate and yet so hardy!
Kerry - each one was lovelier than the last - all those pinks and lavenders and delicate whites!
OOTP - you would recognize the beauty. Your posts are full of such things!
Friko - wouldn't that be fun! Come and stay and we'll walk the land together, writing and talking and taking pictures!
Anne - I thank you :)
Barbara - we've been having exceptionally warm weather. I hope the small spring flowers don't get beaten to the ground with surprise cold!
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