Lines of living

Lines of living geometry provide sufficient pause to discover, instead of a butterfly,

two of a kind of hoop-skirted moth: Chalcoela iphitalis, the sooty-winged chalcoela,

whose caterpillars hatch in paper wasp nests, feed on the host wasp’s larvae,
occupy then vacant cells for their own metamorphosis, and emerge to resume the circle all over.

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milkweed garden — third spring, first blooms

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moment

  mown a moment remembering thyme-leaved speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia).

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Leaving the Rose Garden by the House

Leaving the rose garden by the house, today, bent upon our knees
and close enough to kiss the ground of Little Crum Creek,

we might just listen to the stridulation of abdomen and wings
beneath the armor of a passing “Betsy” beetle–Horned passalus, Odontotaenius disjunctus–

with the urgency of, otherwise faint and muted, unsettling screams…

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a brief turn

Cherry Springs State Park, I’m told, is named for groves of black cherry trees–

its evening sky,  the clearest and darkest in Pennsylvania.

These days by Little Crum Creek, hours from the skygazers I’ll one night join,

a single black cherry briefly flowers the white light of our nearest star.

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occasion

Constantly time and space align in ways we occasionally recognize:
through bare limbs before spring leaves–
a pileated woodpecker feeds from a dying tree snag

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Sunlight

Spring sun —                             light come to life                            in every limb

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