Yep. Today, it is raining again, here in Northfield, Minnesota, but today I am looking on the bright side! Many thanks to model Mattie Lufkin–Mattie, you bring sunshine wherever you go!
LESLIE
“Rain, rain, go away” Noah’s Ark Quilt, Made for a Friend, 1994Carleton College Campus, New Student Week 2016
We have a singular one in our back garden at the foot of the elm.
Each spring it rises in a trio of tiers: leaves, sepals, petals.
It offers a time-lapse waltz of color change: white satin, berry pink, ash.
Leslie Schultz
I first learned about these woodland flowers when I was a child in Oregon. When we moved to Northfield, we planted one at the base of our American Elm. Both are still healthy! Our trillium should be blooming in a few weeks, and this year I intend to take some photographs of it when it is fully pink. (The first and second images are from our garden. The middle image was taken at the Northfield Post Office.) Until I was able to observe this single plant, I did not know how the starlight-white of the new trillium bloom turns pink as it ages. Botanically, I read that this results from self-generated anthocyanins–triggered by stress or aging–with the goal of reclaiming and conserving the nutrients in the petals that the trillium is throwing away. I don’t fully understand that mechanism, but I find myself wondering about the way humans seem to move oppositely along the color spectrum–from rosy baby to white-haired elder.
As evidence, I submit the following from a dozen years ago! Below is an image taken at Village on the Cannon. Julia and I are waiting for our Spanish lesson with Susan Hvistendahl and celebrating that a trio of my photographs are on the wall. Today, I note that my face then was rosier, my hair less threaded with white just a decade ago.
The house on the headland, once snug, is now ransacked by wind, pelted by rain, invaded by small seeds seeking to catch hold in a new place.
Needle grasses burst through floorboards. White petals cling, fresh découpage, to fading blue wallpaper. Saplings pierce the shingles. And all summer, bees patrol.
“Quasi-stellar”: nefarious stolen light, pulsating power, whirling disk of hot gas— electric! magnetic! organized around a black hole that consumes galaxies, sucks them in.
Ah, mystery solved. There are people like that, powerful ones who want to be stars.
I watch them from a distance. I try not to be s u c k e d i n .
Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn? I watch the compass needle of your spire. Your glow flares and falls, and so I must mourn.
I have walked beside you, consecrated urn, who anchors passions and banks human fire. Heart of the City of Light, how can you burn?
My footsteps echoed inside you. I could discern your perfume distilled from fervent desire. Your glow flares and falls; your city must mourn.
Stone Mother, Grey Lady, where shall we turn? Our hearts are heavy with praise and useless ire. Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn?
Could your serene blue gaze help us learn to sing on despite this ruined choir? Your glow flares and falls, and all France must mourn.
Our Eternal Lady, you shall return, but today we weep as you seem to expire. Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn? Your glow flares and falls, and the world must mourn.
Leslie Schultz
Like everyone, I am shocked and devasted by the sight of flames engulfing, yesterday, the gothic church of Notre-Dame de Paris. I was last there ten years ago, with my dear friend and my daughter, and I keep thinking about the contrast between the joy then and the great sadness now.
For me, a cri de coeur requires form to contain it. Perhaps that is why this poem came as a villanelle. Though any response I can make seems wholly inadequate, I offer this poem and these photographs, all taken on March 24, 2009. From the dawn-lit window of our small hotel to Sainte Chapelle, Pont Saint-Michel, the Seine, a small couscous restaurant on the Left Bank,–all were taken in the vicinity of Notre-Dame that happy day.
