mid-march canal

These tiny eraser-sized flowers turn a field into a blue haze. Only laying on my belly can I see the singular delicate regularity of each blossom.

Native witchhazel, the demure forerunner of the showy hybridized models in the market, invokes an olfactory memory of walks in the woods with my father when I was a little child: a broken twig, a pleasantly fresh, just-shy-of-linament aroma.

In a damp expanse of grasses, still not sprung, the marsh marigolds shine out, waxy, reflective of the late afternoon sun.