Botanoluminescence
From mid-September to mid-October hereabouts, sunlight slants in through birches, oaks and pines at
angles unseen in any other time of year. In late afternoon the scarlet sumac and skeleton goldenrod and
even stands of horseweed radiate energy that practically sets the day on fire. The angle of the sunlight is
prying something loose. The dry brown stalks and inflorescences of grass are illuminated as if from
inside.
It takes superhuman patience to keep a scientific eye.
The maples, Thoreau observed, are "the most beautiful of all tangible things." Their red leaves, and the
copper beech leaves, purple grasses and burst milkweed pods become prisms of things unseen, directing
otherwise invisible glints of divinity onto your retina and transforming them there, right in the same angle
where the sea and sun vanish into each other. In the crystal clear autumn sunlight, the intangible is as
near to tangible as it can get and not kill you.
Amateur Naturalist
All text in these pages Copyright 2011 Dana Wilde.
Photos of Earth objects Copyright Dana Wilde and
Bonnie Woellner unless otherwise attributed.
Photos and graphics of outer space objects courtesy
of NASA unless otherwise attributed.
Contact: naturalist@dwildepress.net
By Dana Wilde
L'Eternite / Eternity
By Arthur Rimbaud / Dana Wilde. trans.
It's recovered.
What? -- Eternity.
It's the sea gone
With the sun.
Guardian spirit,
Let's whisper consent
To empty night
And the day on fire.
From human prayers,
From common impulses,
From them you're cut free
And fly that way.
Since for you alone,
Embers of satin,
Duty is discharged
Without saying: finally.
Not hope, there,
Nor guide.
Knowledge with patience,
Agony's certain.
It's recovered.
What? -- Eternity.
It's the sea gone
With the sun.
