columnar basalt + ephemeral flower

of balance, and Balancing Rock

the flowers know it’s summer,

now that a front has blustered through

and driven the sodden skies toward Greenland,

we savor the flowering bog:

wild lily-of-the-valley, sheep laurel, sundew, 

orchid, bunch berry, Clinton’s lily, one pink lady-slipper, 

and the luxurious leaves of the skunk cabbage,

all revealed because a geologic wonder needed a path

so people could access it,

magnificent cliffs of basalt, uplifted and frozen as faceted columns,

one column somehow holds itself erect,

though it seems it should fall,

Balancing Rock, they call it, hard by the sea,

our day is of the ephemeral, and of the enduring.

by Henry H. Walker

June 23, ‘19