LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: Botanical Garden of the Piedmont

  • Winter bongos

    Winter bongos

    Yesterday I drafted this blog from inside a very cold bongo drum. High winds rippled and banged our metal roof riotously: “Thumbing / the tin roof like a smoker who / cannot get the house to stay alight,” I wrote in Mycocosmic, in a poem about perimenopausal sleeplessness. Even though hot flashes are rare now,…

  • At the lip of the cave

    At the lip of the cave

    It may be hibernation season, but I can feel the literary world heating up again–professors building syllabi, organizational emails flying. I’m participating in some of that planning energy toward two local events in the next month: “Writing from the Underworld” at Rockbridge Regional Library branch three blocks from me (1/29, 5:30-7:00, a short reading followed…

  • Nuts raining down

    Nuts raining down

    I needed to get out into the woods, but between sciatica and recovering from the sprained ankle, it’s been hard to plan, or for that matter to pick a trail that hits my sweet spot between genuinely peaceful and not-too-rugged. Yesterday my spouse remembered Reservoir Hollow. It’s an obscure out-and-back trail a 15-minute drive away,…

  • Hawthorns, bogs, & undersongs

    Hawthorns, bogs, & undersongs

    The BurrenSometimes you bring pain along like a walletof funny-colored bills or a mobile phone.Here’s a knotted neck for the Burren. A spirit-fissure to echo the limestone grykes. Karstpavement matches you: riven grays, white lichen,sky pale with tiredness. Stand on a clint and becomeinvisible, perfectly camouflaged by pain.Yet in the watery gaps tiny pink flowers…