Travel Songs

Longenecker Gardens (Arboretum UW Madison)
    – after Whitman



Ash leaves like golden swords,
Sugar maples, Hemlock, Crabapples, Vibernum,
red eruptions from every limb at the peak of autumn.
Here it was Leopold who planted
the long ridge line of experimental pines eighty years ago
at the far end of Redwing Marsh near the Grady Tract.
Where the prairie oak endures
its lone perch among the bunchgrass of the Savannah,
its corked bark evolved to expel fire.
Grasses wild and swaying.
Wild crisp music of the wind,
the wild music of the hawkwing cutting,
the music of the wild turkey scratching leaves
  baked of the underbrush.
Oh, for all to climb up the stem of such
a festival of color!
Hand by hand, foot by foot, up the steeples of color!