tiny green grasshopper

tiny green grasshopper,

your lush lemon daylily,

gone tomorrow

When I stoop to smell the sweet fragrance of a lemon daylily, I spot the tiniest grasshopper I've ever seen, perched on one of the upward curving stamens. It poses like a model as I take its photograph, only moving its antennas, which are twice as long as its bright green body.
          On the same stalk as the fully open blossom are the remains of yesterday's bloom and the swelling buds, each one bigger than the one below it. By tomorrow morning, today's lush lily will look like its shriveled companion, as each flower has but one day to fulfill its mission in life. 
          And the little grasshopper? Does it intend to eat the blossom before it wilts? They are certainly tasty, as the ancient Chinese discovered.
          Even the dried blossoms are beautiful, twisting in orange folds and crenelations like creative origami.

butterflies pirouette

butterflies pirouette

on the pink lips of milkweed

half closed, half open 

Early June, time for Red Milkweed, Queen Anne's Lace and Bird's-foot Trefoil to take their turn blooming. This butterfly looks like it had a close encounter with a hungry bird.

Butterflies, large and small, singly and in groups, flock to the deep pink pom poms of Red Milkweed. 

Honey bees delve into the golden coins of Bird's-foot trefoil.

And wasps explore the white doilies of Queen Anne's Lace.

bumble bee breaching

bumble bee breaching

the lure of saffron petals,

exchanging favors

The sweet-scented rose, rooted to the ground, waits with the intention to attract the services of the bumble bee. The airborne bee, randomly roaming, pursues the intention to gather nectar from blossoms. They meet, half by design, half by chance. The bumble bee, legs laden with gold dust, passes up buds and pale blooms until it lands on a deep apricot blossom. 

Perched on the ruffled petals, the bee searches for the entrance to the heart of the rose. It takes a big bee to find the opening among all those petals -- no little honey bees hovering around these roses. 

When the bumble bee locates the center of the blossom, it dives headfirst into the inner sanctum. 

They exchange favors -- the rose releases nectar to the bee, while the bee inadvertently deposits pollen from other flowers on the sticky stamens.

After long moments of probing, the bumble bee departs on its dark, transparent wings, leaving the fertilized flower to begin another cycle of waiting as the ovary swells and the petals fall away.

The Deer Meadow

The locals think I’m crazy,

re-seeding by hand,

but no one will lend us a tractor

with a three-point hitch.

Machinery’s useless anyway

for wild grass seed tangled

with bits of stems, leaves and forb corollas

that clog the drill.

The week you lie paralyzed

on a white bed in a white curtained stall,

I pace the pasture you call

the deer meadow—

pioneering in reverse, shuttling across

the once tallgrass prairie,

scattering the russet seeds in an arc

for the coltish wind.

Potpourri of wine bronze gold gathered

at Big Creek and Redfeather,

with names like the poppling song

of the mockingbird—

Tahoka daisy, goldstem grass, dropseed,

turkey foot grass, bastard toadflax,

dame’s rocket, downy sunflower, hoary puccoon,

blanketflower, rocket larkspur.

No compass plant to guide me

through the maze of corridors,

no rattlesnake-master to vanquish

the tumor swallowing your spine.

Between bouts of rain,

poison ivy, thorns,

and the lopped off stalks of goldenrod,

I stride the scalp shorn field—

dragging fifty-pound bags of chopped hay,

each handful light as fuzzy hair,

clinging to the chaff, blanketing the beds

trampled by deer.

There is an intimacy in this slow spreading,

time to find a meadowlark nest

that survived the mower, its single speckled egg

unbroken.

Space to discover, beyond the chemical waste

of corn fields and hog lots,

below the wreck and rubble, a rhapsody

of chocolate hearts

pressed into the dark and yielding mud,

a duet of the delicate

cloven feet of the cinnamon doe

tap dancing at dawn.

In your deer meadow the wind-borne seed

will sprout from its safe

confining shell, raising a tender green

alleluia.

As I drop the last clinging seed

on the bare fallow ground,

your fluttering heart emerges

from a mantle of wildflowers.

black bee, yellow bee

black bee, yellow bee,

orange butterfly and white --

sipping coneflower nectar

On one small patch of yellow coneflowers, I spot two kinds of bees and butterflies. Naturally, I recognize the yellow striped honey bee, the kind my friend keeps in square white hives, but the black bee is a bit of a mystery. 
          A little research reveals that the mystery bee is also a honey bee (Apis melifera), but the European dark bee, also called the German black bee, is a different subspecies from the Common or Western honey bee. The dark bee was actually the first honey bee brought to the Americas by Europeans in the early 1600s.
          In addition to the two kinds of honey bees, the yellow coneflowers (Echinacea paradoxa) are being visited by two kinds of butterflies, a tawny one with dark spots along the edge of its wings and a white one with an orange streak on its lower wing edge. The coneflowers, with their drooping golden petals and spiky crown, are obviously a favorite of both bees and butterflies. Both types of insects are able to probe deeply with their long proboscis into the spiky tubes that make up the flower's central disk in order to sip the hidden nectar.

racing to the top

racing to the top

of Snake Alley a biker

pants, tongue hanging out

Over 700 bikers come from all over North America to pit their muscles and endurance against one of the most physically challenging races in the Midwest. The Snake Alley Criterium is held on a 15-block course in downtown Burlington, a historic town on the Mississippi River. 

What makes the races especially challenging is a one-block climb on a nineteenth century brick street named Snake Alley. The 276 foot (84 meter) street has seven switchbacks in 60 feet (18 meter) with an average grade of 12.5 percent in that one block, making it one of the crookedest streets in the world.

Snake Alley was built in 1894 by three of the town's German founders (a landscape engineer, the city engineer and a paving contractor) as an experimental street design and a shortcut between the business district on the river and the neighborhood shopping district on the hill. The locally fired, blue clay bricks and limestone curbs are still in place after more than a century. 

However ingenious and practical, the street proved too challenging for horse-drawn carriages. There is a legend that the fire department used the alley to test horses. If a horse could take the curves at a gallop and still be breathing when it reached the top, it was considered fit to haul the city's fire wagons. Unfortunately, many teams ran out control or stumbled over the limestone curbing, sometimes resulting in a broken leg.

For the past 30 years Snake Alley has been used to test bikers. The Criterium, one of several qualifying races for amateur cyclists to compete against the top professionals at the Nature Valley Grand Prix, includes races for bikers ranging in age from 10 to 60 plus, with a separate race for women. 

The test on the alley involves racing up and around seven steep serpentine turns on a corrugated surface to the top of the hill, not just once but ranging from 4 times for the youngsters up to 20 times for the final men's race. 

It's breathtaking to watch the racers in their colorful gear come barreling up from the river in a pack of up to 150, spread out across the wide city street, then charging up the narrow alley, wheels nearly touching. Amazingly, there are very few collisions.

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the Snake Alley Criterium, and the race is made even more challenging by an unusually hot day for late May, 95 F (35 C). The last race of the day, the hottest part of the day, features the men's class 1, 2 and pro teams, competing for the top prize, $10,000 for ten places. 

Thousands of spectators line the winding curves of Snake Alley. 

Coaches and fans yell their encouragement from the sidelines.
        

Some even run alongside to give a boost to a racer.

While others spray the bikers with water to cool them down. 
  

Many of the men are doubled over, grimacing or gasping for breath at the top of the tortuous hill, before the long descent to the river and another loop of the circuit. 

The grueling event was won by Paul Martin, who started out in 84th place in the 118-man field. At age 39, this was Martin's fifteenth try. He and his Panther teammates held hands as they crossed the finish line.

Peonies after Rain

                                                                                

Hundreds of red and white flags border the square.

The bandstand erupts with echoes

of distant battle—

polished brass, steel,

stretched skin.

The cemetery sign says One Way, Do Not Enter.

But I am not driving through

like the faces behind glass on Memorial Day,

leaving red and white flags, plastic placards,

amputated flowers to dress up stones.

I am not bringing dead flowers

to remember the dead.

I do not want to remember

what’s left of you

in the black plastic bag.

The rain waited patiently until

the once-a-year folks drove away.

The peonies I planted have fallen in a circle,

white faces pressed against the grass,

shattered petals like shards of bone.

I found the skull of a deer in our woods,

fallen this side of the No Hunting sign

where the hunter did not track

the trail of blood, a clot of red

mushrooms erupting from the empty eye socket.

Walking the trail you bushwhacked,

I learned to see the world through your eyes.

Once, you stopped, looked up at the moon

and laughed. That’s when I saw the white rabbit

nibbling a moonflower.

A year ago I sprawled across squares of sod,

watching ants crawl all over

white peony globes. The buds refuse to open,

you said, until the ants lick off the sap

binding the petals.

A year has knit the broken ground.

Now a globe of white light rises

from the scattered petals.

I want see the moon

through your luminous eyes.