Perishable Goods By: Tanya Schmid You once jogged daily down this green path, headphones pounding out a rhythm to match the stomping of your feet, pushing your legs faster as you chased “to dos” around your brain. Now you walk softly, and see, and listen. The silver undersides of leaves flash at you. You turn your head to feel the exact direction of today’s wind as it strokes your cheek. You hear the drizzle falling lightly on your rain-jacket’s hood. Much has changed since the rush of the world was suspended. As you cross a field you wink at the red and white clover, smile at the shaggy blond heads of dandelions, and whisper the new names you have learned: chickweed, plantain, sorrel, St. John’s wort. Within each square yard, you see a dozen different grasses all growing harmoniously -- some short with fat stalks the complexion of olives, others shooting tall, dressed in bright lime, and those bearded or heavy with straw-colored seed – very different from the even, bluegrass carpet your folks once had as a lawn. You stop to inhale the diversity and to gather a few poppies and chicory blossoms, leaving enough so they can reseed. You know that each time you see the small vase of wildflowers on your kitchen table, you will be uplifted by this memory of bending to gather them. On your daily path through your neighborhood’s enchanted woods you run your hands across hazelnut or oak, beech or elm, because now you can distinguish them not only by their leaves but even in winter, by the texture of their bark and the leaf buds on their branches. You watch as the black buds of the ash give leave to the white blossoms of the hawthorn, and your nose lifts to nature’s perfume when it rides on the spring breeze. You have learned the names of the wild berries and know when each will be ripe enough to call to the birds. In May, the song of meadowlarks, vireos and warblers dances beside you as you walk, accompanied by the calls of your forever neighbors: the mockingbirds, jays and woodpeckers. You know the new voices bring pollen from the Gulf of Mexico on their wings or seeds in their bellies from the Amazon Basin, their feathers still dusty from the slopes of the Andes. "Chester County, Pennsylvania" by Karen Gilbert
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