Sun rising into clouds. The mob of wild garlic heads in the meadow are beginning to shed their white hoods.
wild garlic
6/28/2021
Sunny and hot. A catbird skulks in lilac shade. The unfurling beaks of wild garlic point in all directions, like a nervous flock of cranes.
8/4/2016
The wild garlic has all gone to seed, heads bowed with the weight of their descendants. A tiny ichneumon patrols the porch, wings a-quiver.
7/15/2016
The continual, three-syllable chatter of goldfinches. Wild garlic stalks have begun to straighten and the heads to shed their white masks.
7/8/2016
The crowds of wild garlic in my yard have uncoiled their white heads and seem to peer in all directions like bewildered cranes.
8/8/2015
A dragonfly with shimmering, banded wings and an electric blue abdomen lands on a garlic seed-head, falls still and nearly disappears.
7/29/2015
The feral garlic top-heads have split their skins, unveiling clusters of beady eyes. The sun’s a glowing smudge. It’s going to be hot.
6/28/2015
Garlic heads in the yard are beginning to uncurl—curved arrows pointing in all directions. But the rain still follows its straight road.
2/7/2015
A gray morning. I notice, silhouetted against the snow, how all the heads in each patch of wild garlic are bent in the same direction.
2/7/2014
Just two wild garlic heads remain in the yard, dangling on their stalks like sad, gray Christmas ornaments above the glittery white.
7/7/2012
A fawn among the wild garlic: the white tops continue in the spots of its coat. Later, a hummingbird at the beebalm: matching red throats.
7/8/2011
In the yard, the horde of wild garlic heads have begun to rise from their private ruminations and aim their long beaks together at the sky.
2/27/2011
Three stalks of garlic in the yard have kept their heads throughout this long winter, seasoning the snows. The distant fluting of geese.
7/11/2010
On the garlic tops below the porch, the skins are peeling back, burst by the pressure of insurrectionary mobs with wild green hair.