Words of March

It’s new moon today and I’ve nothing to say. Rather, I have plenty to say but little which would be helpful to me or to you. I offer a meditation in flowers.

Once upon a time there were no flowers at all... A little while ago--about one hundred million years...

...just a short time before the close of the Age of Reptiles, there occurred a soundless, violent explosion. It lasted millions of years, but it was an explosion, nevertheless. It marked the emergence of the angiosperms--the flowering plants.

Flowers changed the face of the planet. Without them, the world we know--even man himself--would never have existed.

So wrote Loren Eisley in The Immense Journey, first edition published in 1957 when I was ten.

Demeter’s Joy, photo collage, c.harmon

Glacier, or avalanche lilies, grow in the Canadian Rockies from montane to sub-alpine, chasing the snow upwards as spring transforms into alpine summer. They can be seen growing right through the snow and in meadows carpeted with their loveliness surrounded by tiny white spring beauty.

The first time I encountered such a meadow was at Healey Pass, hiking with Dad one June in the late 1960’s. Many years later I wrote a poem about my first attempt to photograph avalanche lilies on that glorious afternoon.

I lie on the ground in homage
gaze into the face of lily
her petals curl against blue sky
like yellow bird wings

eager for spring
she thrusts green heads
through snow 
twin leaves furl round reddish stems
 
which rise six inches     eight inches
curl     dangle a green bud  
six yellow petals force an opening
a downward facing tangle of petals 

then     tips unfurl skyward
reveal stamens coated with deep red pollen

March is the month of my birth. I love its growing light, its promise.