KALMIA SWING (for Ashley Garrett)
she says it says it is
she heard it
broad-leafed past the meadow
when?
Edge of the forest, up the hill,
fence past the back yard
howl of those these leaves
evergreen
and these white flowers will not fade —
a swirl of music.
let it, let the colors
sort themselves out,
color is is a hand from another country
that moves the flowers,
a friend’s piece of paper,
words on it, how do they get there,
where do images come from?
The picture names them into life,
calls them a flower moving,
I answer it is Laurasia
our primal continent,
who knows
the names from which we come,
from which we grow,
she floats us midway in
ocean if air, gives
us a home, calls it land
flower music flower dance
we
race into the colors and inhabit them
make ourselves at home
So Pehr Kalm came from Sweden to explore the flowers and trees of North America, beasts and waters. He was what they called a naturalist, he named things he saw. And he saw this and we call it a laurel — not the noble laurel of the ancient Greek poets, and not the Oregon laurel girls in California pick in redwood forests to braid around their lovers’ brows. This is the the kind of laurel that back home they named after its fibder, Kalmia, broad-leafed mountain laurel.
She braids the colors
before our eyes,
wreathes them round
until the flower
starts to dance
ancient round dance of all living
,
the single act
the swing of beauty
comes with us
where we are
the only place we can live
.
---Robert Kelly