Little Miami

"The sycamores have white bark only by the river," Ryan points out.

A jackpot of seeds I find burrowed in a fallen tree, he suggests might have been the hoard of hibernating squirrels. Filled my pockets with cold black wooded balls, slick pods, interesting bark, acorns, and walnuts. Brushing them on my pants before slipping them in my pocket.

Home, I lay them on the dinner table in a certain order, framing the seeds with the bark, spacing them carefully apart.

Donna, biologist, Ph.D, leans over and tells me the names. She tells me some are "pod seeds," the long shiny pod is from a black locust, the chipping bark in from a sycamore. What looks like a rotted lime is the casing of a walnut, the spiky seed is from a sweet gum, the rough moth wings are from a maple.

"The Kentucky coffee bean pod," she points out.

"A buckeye, or horse chestnut, bark from a birch tree, a sycamore fig."

One by one she introduces me to them.

Two questions spring up for everyone that is answered. The fundamental ones, back to the origins of everything, "how did these come to be?"

A question not asked enough, or not explored so thoroughly. It seems there is no questions one can ask that doesn't address the universe itself. And we are, the universe asking and responding.

Back to being five-years-old, on the lap of my cousin Summer who is drawing a face with me. Going over every feature we carefully and deliberately make the shapes. Eyes, squinting ovals, eye lids being a carefully drawn line above. Delicate strokes make up eye lashes, two black beads are pupils, the detail of black stripes within the color, the milky white surrounding, the pink softness in the corners. Features I don’t even have names for.

I think back to the old zine while back where I wrote about Natty and the mullein, how the moments when I'm open and curious are the greatest moments and the ones I wish to share in my writing. The moments that I need to flow through me. These are the small notions the universe answers that are beyond me. They belong to all of us.

"The seeds are black because they've been frozen," Donna tells me. We are unsure about the locket looking pod, maybe a milkweed.

"When a milkweed cracks open it releases little floating seeds like a dandelion."

Of the old lime she indicates, "That’s a walnut inside its casing. Don't try to peel it off or your hands will be dyed black. I had a friend who peeled them for a job one summer and his hands were completely black for a year." The mysteries of the plants revealed from the stories.

It reminds me of the afternoon with the nettle.