You smelled all flowers,
learned of every animal
who also walked there.

You’ve been gone three months,
I live in different time,
I’m here or here or...

Picking up the scent
of brown-eyed Susan, bee balm —
only gentle steps.

The meadow deer path
led us through soft wild carrot,
fog, clinging to it.

Old field asters bloom,
fresh gold faces in autumn
for winding-down bees.

White water lilies
bloom from underwater stems —
the pond’s surface breaks.

We’re not strangers here —
forget-me-nots raise blue heads
all along the path.

The light on Sunday,
daisies and spent hydrangeas
in the empty church.

Bloodroot and blue squill
open to woodpecker drums
in the spring forest.

Creeping buttercup
stitched with things not to forget,
the source of it all.

Snowbirds in and out
of the yellow autumn field,
their chatter comes first.

Soft, endless asters,
the bees are mad for them now—
and I’m mad for both.

It feels like magic,
the sun, the air in our lungs—
October asters.

If I could step out
of myself and into this
wild, blooming milkweed.

William Carlos Williams wrote
about a white field of wild carrot,
like this one, today.

Picking wild carrot,
by the side of unlined roads—
all seemed possible.

Arms full of flowers,
teasels under the sun, moon—
bees in love with them.

Next to the highway,
with soft magenta centers,
yellow mullein grows.

Solitary figures—
stand of daisies at daybreak,
ox-eyed, resolute.

Sweet woodruff blooming,
maybe here for centuries—
low, fragrant, knit-in.