HERE AT THE CABIN-IN-THE-WOODS
HERE AT THE CABIN-IN-THE-WOODS, I am waiting. And watching. I’m watching the old rock wall I built long ago. I’m watching the sides of the gravel lane, and along the paths I like to wander. And sometime soon I will see what I’m looking for. The first little hints of white. The first tightly clasped blossom around a green stem, soon to open into a delicate single spray of petals. And then whole drifts of them, through the forest.
Bloodroot, the little ephemeral is called, for its running red sap. Suitable for a little dab of ‘war paint’ on a son’s cheeks many years ago. Or now on a grandchild’s.
There are no white drifts yet. Nor the little pink blossoms of spring beauty, or the purple hepatica. Or later the taller, more magnificent trillium. But they will come. They will all come. And I am watching.