By Jean Ponzi
Golden Yellow
Lavish Greens
Birdie warbles, twitters, trills
Breeze lilt, rattle and whoosh
Solar canopy
Cumulus piles
Sunday afternoon heat
Ripples the vast blue dome view.
Rare treat now for human eyes:
Vista that all hues of our species
Took for granted, loved and fought,
Over ages under Nature’s rule.
Square-stemmed Monarda, bee balm,
Sturdy as tomato stakes.
Towering Silphium brush my chest.
Grasses I cannot name
Poke and whisk and flip out seeds.
I count twenty different species blooming!
Skippers! Monarchs! Bumblebees!
Sonic distance:
String tune pickin’
Trail cyclists whizzing
Thunder in the blackening West
Some came today for old time music
On a white wooden porch
I came to feel this Prairie
Soaking Sound, Smells, Sunshine
Leaf tickles
Insects lighting
(Improbably, no chigger bites!)
Slow steps on a narrow path
Pause, Stand, Turning: Earth-Slow
Sensing around all directions
Restored!
Store, porch, plant place!
For Birds!
For Insects!
For the camera guy, drone-flying!
And on this Prairie day, for me.
The 4-acre Peers Prairie lies between the Peers Store and the Katy Trail. A 2016 collaboration with Missouri State Parks and the non-profit Magnificent Missouri planted native wildflowers and grasses on this trailside property, rooting biodiversity in pollinator habitat and beauty for all of us on the Trail. Big thanks to Dan and Connie Burkhardt and the restoration experts of DJM Ecological for growing this exquisite place. Enjoy live music on the Peers Store Porch every weekend through October 30, bring chairs, and be sure to experience the Prairie.
Jean Ponzi converses eco-logically with fellow humans on her Earthworms podcast, from KDHX St. Louis Independent Media.