Redbud

Everywhere, like grass: Toadflax, yellow coils              a girl’s pincurls. Overhead,the purely ornamental fruits, whites and pinks

thick on the bough. And straight ahead, along the path,              Spice Viburnum, exotic shrubnamed for the smell its clustered flowers held—nutmeg—

that made St. Louis tropical. We walked a lush,              vast, groomed preserve—preserve in the sensemeant by self-indulgent kings, and in the sense

meant by science: every bloom and bine and bole,              each independent green was labeled,that was what we loved. And at the center, bronzed:

Linnaeus, master of design, whose art it was              to shepherd any living thinginto its proper pasture. There, Foam Flower. There,

Lungwort, vernacular “Spilled Milk,” leaf splashed with white,              a graceful Pulmonariain the language of greatest clarity which classifies

lilies and roses, rows of lilac. And here, at our feet,              shade-drunk dark herb: Wormwood, our wordfor bitterness: an Artemesia, The Hunter,

goddess made incarnate on the ground, in whose name              the avid mortal watching herwas torn apart. Where was his name? Where was his flower?

A cloud paused in the spring sky, and there came to us then,              on the path, another blossoming.Radiant in mauve, head to toe, back braced

as though to balance the weight of full breasts, one hand,              gloved, lifted unthinking to petthe back of the hair, the hair itself a lacquered helmet.

And what should we make of her height, her heft, the size of the feet,              the gruff swagger in the gait:we stared outright—it seemed all right to stare—like

Linnaeus, who’d ranked the stones, and sorted the plants by how              they propagate and colonizedwhatever crawls or swims or flies or bears live young?

Light by which I’ve lived, the wish to name, to know,              the work of it, the cost of it—if only I could be, or want to be, more like

that boy: ignorant, stunned, human.                                                                      “Acteon,” you said,              by his own hounds torn asunder. And sothe brief shadow flickered and dissolved: the world

was ours again, the world like this, made less confused.              And we strolled like kings back down the path,past a Redbud tree in plush white bloom.

(2004, Volume 25.3)