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In the Wisconsin Arboretum
A sea of horsetails under the boardwalk
and blue flags bloom in the marsh.
A pair of sandhill cranes browses
the pond edge, wild indigo
waves white in the distance
where wet prairie paths are closed.
Under the trees, the confetti of
yellow-orange petals seem inexplicable
until I see leaf hands waving above—
a tall tulip tree, farther north
than I thought possible until
we encounter another and
expectations are overturned.
The twisting drive here made
my head spin like a gyroscope.
Now when you look at the trail map,
I’m disoriented, feel my brain refuse
to make sense of markers and turns.
Yet, even unable to orient myself
to a chart, I notice the clues
left by petals, like breadcrumbs
for our way back to Indiana.
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Flock
Driving home from Indiana
we finally see the blackbirds
I’ve missed all fall, feeding
in stubbled cornfields. Later
another flock shapeshifts
south in migration, a
mesmerizing murmuration.
We have yet to travel through
the flattest landscape—
past exhausted Streator
and Starved Rock, neither
a refuge for us on the back
and forth to family,
past the distant towers
of the nuclear plant in
Byron, where absent poetry,
tedium turns to thinking
about how decades ago
it seemed that countless
redwings, grackles, starlings
winged overhead and there
was nothing remarkable
about driving mile after mile
as the radio crackled in and out,
no thought of the finitude
of birds, resources, or time.