April 24, 2020 Poem “Xeriscaping”

 


Xeriscaping
            for Mary Lahr Schier
 
 
There can be no escaping from storm
or drought.
 
(Ink flows across the blank page
or stops.)
 
Consider the options with care,
then choose.
 
(Develop long roots that seek
a deep source.)
 
It is a shame to waste these
precious drops,
to fling water like pearls of rain
onto sand.
 
(On the other hand,
flow is everything.)
 
Long roots filter out rank poisons.
Water carries them back into
the making dark.
 
(Rejection or chagrin are perennial,
self-sowing.)
 
Depending upon conditions,
select with care.
 
For sun:
asters and black-eyed Susans,
coneflowers and yarrow,
blazing star and prairie dropseed,
even Blue Heaven little bluestem.
 
(Read! Read! Read!
The blaze of tradition shines forth
and nourishes.)
 
For shade:
columbine and wild ginger,
wild geranium and Solomon’s seal,
pachysandra and dead nettle,
bugleweed and red twig dogwood,
wild hosta and cinnamon fern.
 
(The coaxing practices, the lattices
of form and habit.)
 
Finally, perhaps a rain garden?
Something to catch what spills in?
 
(The index cards handy. The pencils sharpened.)
 
“A garden,” said Stanley Kunitz, “ is a poem
that is never finished.”

He knew a thing.
Or two. 
 

Leslie Schultz


Today’s poem is inspired by a perennially favorite text, The Northern Gardener: From Apples to Zinnias–150 Years of Garden Wisdom by Mary Lahr Schier. Two years ago, that handy and beautifully written compendium introduced me to a new word and inspired a poem, “Cotyledons,” about those first two tiny green leaves thrust up by a sprouting seed. This year, the chapter on “Xeriscaping” inspired a poem.

The quotation that closes the poem is drawn from a book of essays on poetry and gardening by Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006), The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden.

The photographs here of plants were taken on Earth Day, 2020 at the nearby McKnight Prairie Remnant,seven miles from Northfield. This thirty-five acre piece of land is the epitome of xeriscaping with native plants and is cared for by Carleton College. Tim and I were able this year to visit early enough to see, for the first time, the pasque flowers blooming.

News Flash! Two of My Poems Appear in the March 2015 issue of THE WAYFARER

Compass_Wayfarer_header

The Wayfarer: A Journal of Contemplative Literature is an unusually thoughtful publication, featuring contemporary work that cares about timeless values, work that is grounded but also transcendent.

Its next issue, to be published on March 21, 2015, will carry two poems of mine, “Black Swans” and “Easter Island”. I am very honored to appear in this magazine, and I am looking forward to reading the whole issue, cover to cover.(You can explore THE WAYFARER and HOMEBOUND PUBLICATIONS here, and you can pre-order print copies and electronic copies at a reduced price, if you are intrigued.)

The Wayfarer Spring 2015 cover

I was originally pointed to this publication by my friend, poet Sally Nacker, who published with them in March 2014 and gave a copy of that issue to me. (Regular readers will recall the post last May publishing Sally’s insightful and ravishingly illustrated letter to Amy Lowell called “Wings and Windows”.) I have been following The Wayfarer since and have been impressed with the quality of the work, as well as the beautiful presentation of poetry and prose. Most of all, I am attracted to emphasis on environmental stewardship that marries action to reflection. I respect their ambitious mission to use the power of the humanities to promote deep and abiding cultural change in human society: “The Wayfarer’s mission is to chart the way for change by building and empowering a community of contemplative voices.”

I also love the manner in which The Wayfarer combines evocative photography with text. Below are two photos of my own that reminded me of this lovely magazine: one is from the marina in Bayfield, Wisconsin ,on the edge our great inland sea of Lake Superior;  the other is of compass plant atop a rise in the McKnight Prairie near my Northfield home, a virgin remnant of the sea of grass.

Blue Boat Bayfield

Compass Plant

Wishing you well, Leslie

 

Back to (Home) Schooling for the First Year of High School & Poem “Desire”

Yellow Leaves Leslie Schultz Watermark

Labor Day is (paradoxically) an extra day of rest, a little booster rocket of celebration needed for the burst of energy we summon to launch into fall. Doesn’t autumn feel at once like an ending (to the growing season, to the languid opportunities of summer vacations) and also a new year, a threshold marking heavier clothes and weightier endeavors?

In our neighborhood, there is also an annual picnic held on the Hill of Three Oaks, on the nearby Carleton College campus. Families come. Children are one year older than last fall, giddy with the anxiety and possibilities of stepping into a new grade. But that will be later. The evening picnic is the time to pass potluck dishes, lounge on the brittle August grass, converse with kind neighbors, swat mosquitoes, watch the young ones run across the fields in seemingly random but purposeful ways, and watch the sun sink over the St. Olaf hill. The day after Labor Day is Back-to-School.

IMG_8546 (Pink Leaves) Leslie Schultz

Our family isn’t always able to attend the picnic, and this was one of those years. With a mound of apples to preserve, an mound of mulch to move, and a several text-related deadlines, we decided to stay home and tend to this enjoyable labor. For us, the shift into the school facet of fall isn’t so sharp and clear as it is for our neighbors, because we have been homeschooling since January of 2006.

Since we homeschool, we have some flexibility if we need or want to take time off during the traditional academic months of September to May, and we also have the option to continue to work on academic subjects during the summer. Most of the time, Julia is keen to continue making progress in languages, music, mathematics, and history–as well as in her creative writing–during the summer. At the same time, the pace is slower, she has fewer structured courses, and we plan for time off and for visits with friends. In addition, Julia spends more time swimming, having sleep-overs with friends,  training for the local Y Kids Tri triathalon, biking, and reading more books just for the sheer pleasure of the summer read. We also dream up a few special summer projects. This year, as regular readers know, we published a co-authored novel called And Sometimes Y, and hosted a readers’ theater to examine William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in detail.

Monarch & Coneflower Close

But will things be different, now that Julia is on the cusp of high school?

Enrolling in a baccalaureate program is four years away, but last month, she took her first admissions tour, and she is beginning to make choices that will prepare her for the roller-coaster ride of college admissions in just a few short years. We’re planning a couple of other campus visits, to colleges in other states, next year. Julia now keeps her own records for time spent on each subject, and she’ll begin to prepare her first transcript in January. She’ll also take the SAT for the first time then. Julia is thinking about a program we have in Minnesota, called PSEO, in which she can get support to attend college-level classes while still in high school and planning to work through a high school chemistry text this year. This is the fall she’ll publish her first solo title–something she’s been refining on for four years–and continue to work on a novel.

This year, she plans to continue to make lots of time for folk dance and recorder–she is a founding player of the Rice County Recorder Consort–piano, music theory ,and the Mexican Folklorico dance troupe. She’ll continue with Chinese, Latin, and Greek, and  riding lessons at Winter Haven Stables, and she wants to spend more time in prairie landscapes.

McKnight Prairie

On the Way to Winter Haven

(View on the Road to Winter Haven Stables)

For this year, the weekly schedule looks similar to last year’s, but I sense that change is moving in, like weather that hasn’t yet arrived. It will be interesting what directions Julia uses to chart her course. And it remains to be seen how I will chart my own!

Compass Plant   (McKnight Prairie Remnant)

Compass Plant (McKnight Prairie Remnant)

DESIRE

The summer sky is swollen silver and blue,
perhaps meaning rain, perhaps a cyclone, or
perhaps nothing at all, a few drops on the dust
while the birds frantically hide in the wide maple crown.

She sits bent-legged on the braided rug, leaning into
three books at once, old books with cut pages and
spines of slick leather.  Behind her is the kitchen
door, where the supper dishes will wait her out.

She is so young.  She could be a colt or a bird who has not
yet stood to find its balance.  Her head bends toward her knees,
and her hands reach out to the world she begins to enter,
born up by a wind of desire into the storm of herself,
welcoming, as heroes do, a difficult passage.

Leslie Schultz

Julia holding Peanut

White MailboxOther News

Future posts will include: “Urban Adornments” (a look at the ways that cities add to the quality of life through public art both humble and monumental), interviews with several creative people, more on homeschooling adventures, and lots of photographs and some new poems.

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