I took a walk with my camera near my home a few weeks ago and noted it in a way that is reflective of how I write in my journal sometimes - when the point of writing is not so much to make a point but more to try and understand experience.
It is more disjointed, conflicted and free-associative than what I sometimes try to do. Please just take that for what it is.
But I felt the sun yesterday and the warmth blew in.
I know, it's early.
I see purple and yellow wildflowers creeping up in yards and fields.
Amongst the deadheaded stretches of goldenrod and milkweed, even.
I don't know the name of most of them. Do I need to, to appreciate them?
I never felt like I did. A name fails nature every time, anyways. Just like art does, really.
Pale attempts to translate what can only be experienced, never spoken, never depicted.
How do I even know what a Trillium is? It struck me when I saw them down by the creek, a few years ago. I was running, dancing almost, bare feet (almost) on the trail, playing don't step on the rocks.
But I saw them and I stopped. I needed to know.
Brilliant blooms for a short time next to the stormwater runoff and forever chemicals and plastics me and my family drink a little bit of, every day.
I feel a few snowflakes on my neck. So it can't be now.
There can't be the Trilliums, yet.
But it was yesterday, I felt the warmth blow in.
And the small spring flood remains. Water in so many places it usually isn't. I like it.
It's early in April, and no, the Trilliums aren't here yet.
Please, don't tell me when it is. I don't want to know.
I want to learn, instead. To see it happen.
When the time is right, I will.
I wonder if, next year, I will remember.
(All photographs April 7, 2025 near an offshoot of Mallet's Creek in Ann Arbor, Michigan)
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