wildflowers

the kettle-moraine state forest is a long, delightful gash of interlobate moraine that formed from the tussling of the green bay lobe and lake michigan lobe of the laurentide ice sheet as they advanced and retreated over thousands of years.

on this particular trip, i hiked to the top of a morainal ridge and sat on a rock to read phyllis walsh’s book river. if you’re a lover of short, dense poems, you should certainly check out walsh’s hummingbird press, if you haven’t already. and check out their HUMMINGBIRD: Magazine of the Short Poem. another wisconsin poet (in addition to lorine niedecker) inspired and encouraged to dense, imagistic poetry by cid corman. the poems below are imitative of those found in the river collection.

(note again: still the flip-phone trip; low res images.)

april arctic air

crane-call answers to walsh’s

poems on the crest

cloudy day

liverwort blooms

on ice’s relic

anyone who’s kept up here will know cudahy woods a bit already, but suffice to say: cudahy woods is a 40-acre parcel of land in milwaukee county that somehow escaped the axe and plow. it’s a beech-maple forest with an unnamed stream running thru, and airplanes skirting by nigh-constantly from mitchell int’l airport.

it’s also where i first started this project and started learning about spring ephemerals, so it has a special place in my heart. so this is kind of an “anniversary post,” and i already found two new flowers i hadn’t identified last spring!

purslane swell delicate

amid a sea of trout

the forest floor vibrant