December 2 - December 6 Week 45 /72
carefully shaking little packages of hope
loose from brittle brown seed heads
with fingers as bone dry as the chaff
I contemplate the quiet gestation of
cardinal flowers, yarrows and ironweeds
contentedly waiting as agitated clouds arrive
releasing showers of large snowglobe flakes
I'm trying to think what happened with my seed gathering. I gathered enough poppy seeds two years ago to pretty much take over the yard. It was unbelievable. This year, with the remainder, I put most of them on the hill coming down to the firepit. Took out all of the blackberries except 2, and most of the raspberries. I'll bet there were 25 plants. I let the Labrador violets go wild, and so they are holding soil now interspersed with five mountain laurels, a few poppies, and some lilacs. The sad truth is that everything is diminishing. The trees are almost 30 feet higher than when I moved here, and the sun is radically diminished. I may have to…