First Wild Strawberry Bloom and Buds

I wrote about the source of these little fellows several years ago. These are yesterday's very earliest blooms, near the front door.  For the whole story, here is the link! Besides a remembrance of an old friend who is gone, I am enjoying something else this year. I've always thought strawberry leaves were pretty, but look at the beautiful shape of the buds!

All day it has been raining steadily. Not a gullywasher, just a slow steady rain. This morning the oldest dachshund put her foot outside to test a small puddle on the deck in front of the door. Then she decided not to go out. It required a gentle push, because it was certainly time!


THE GARDEN

Far back, in the most remote times with their fresh colors,
Already and without knowing it, I must have begun to bring
Everyone into the shadowy garden, half-overgrown,

A kind of lush, institutional grounds--
Snugly or in groups, into that green recess. Everything
Is muffled there; they walk over a rich mulch

Where I have conducted them together into summer shade
And go on bringing them, all arriving with no more commotion
Than the intermittent rustling of birds in the dense leaves,

Or birds' notes in chains or knots that embroider
The sleek sounds of water bulging over the dam's brim:
Midafternoon voices of chickadee, kingbird, catbird;

And the falls, hung in a cool, thick nearly motionless sheet
From the little green pond to shatter perpetually in mist
Over the streambed. And like statuary of dark metal

Or pale stone around the pond, the living and the dead,
Young and old, gather where they are brought: some nameless;
Some victims and some brazen conquerors; the shamed; the haunters;

The harrowed; the cherished; the banished--or background figures,
Old men from a bench, girl with glasses from school--brought beyond
Even memory's noises and rages, here in the quiet garden.

Poem from Robert Pinsky Selected Poems, FSG, 2011

This beautiful poem is a lovely extended metaphorical idea. Memory's Garden. The three-line stanza works beautifully with the long lines. (The lines run over because I like the poem's font to be larger, and the blogger has an unexpandable space.)

The fine use of semi-colons strings together memory-people from many times and places.

I have my own memory garden, but mostly plants are in it.