Ryland Shengzhi Li

Springbeauty

so light
I wonder if you even
are matter
this unbearable tenderness
of being

Five small petals, fragile as winter breath, drawn by blushing veins into a gold center. Out of the earth, a deep russet stem flows into a tip of frosted jade. Twinned leaves thin as grass, as a rainswept tear.

returning here
year after year
the ephemerae
who outlasted
another love’s eternity

We first met at Huntley Meadows. That day, I knelt for hours in still adoration, a solitary sanctuary amid the rush of passersby. I was with you through your many faces: scrunched between sepals, wide and bright to the noon, bound and bowed by the dew.

eleven months
have I waited for you
not one passes
that I do not think about you
my well-rooted love

In April you depart, and I forget you, until perchance some midsummer day I come across your leaves in expedition for moss or fungi. Then I forget again. And having forgotten, receive the unspeakable joy of a new year’s first sighting—and the immeasurable exuberance of earth crescendoing in a million blooms.

river of stars
overflowing white
I set free
the daydreams of my youth
shimmering, startling

The years of our relationship rush into me—laying my body on your body, loafing in your fields, speaking stories and poems, simply being with you as you unfurl your delicate petals into light. I recall the talk I gave about you to my naturalist class. The 18th century Anglican churchman who became your Latin namesake.  The Native Americans who ate your roots. The Earth when she met you and you first came into her.

was it before
the fairies or after
the mountains
in which generation
did your ancestors arrive?

You remind me that love may take a small shape, a brief and silken body of glory. A kindness here, a smile there, a soft touch in the morning, sitting together on a rainy afternoon, traipsing through the meadow, a new note from an old friend.

moonbeams passing
from one bloom
to another
the windfolk ferry
laughter and secrets

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About the Author

Ryland Shengzhi Li (李晟之) is a poet, photographer, and environmental lawyer living in Virginia, USA. Poetry teaches him how to pay attention and to see the beauty and interdependence of all things.

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