Weeds and Stars: Assemblage | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Weeds and Stars: Assemblage

By Lisa Rosenberg

 

“Weeds and stars and everything between them”    — This stretch of pentameter came here with me, stuffed in a folder with other stray lines and partial poems; the folder stuffed in a file caddy; three caddies packed in a car last week, with books, a laptop, a bag of groceries, hiking boots, plus clothing for fog and heat and everything between them.  

Less than an hour from here, my child closes out the school year. My spouse assumes the double mantle. Our garden fills with weeds. Home is a flat, milder microclimate on the bay-side of these mountains. I’ve hiked, driven, dined, and camped throughout this range, but have never lived on the ocean-facing slopes. 

Here is a workspace. Here is a cohort. Here is a view with a room. 

       anyone lived on a pretty fab hill

The view fills with broad clouds, with birds, with distant ships above and below the horizon. Not a building in sight. 

Lessons arrive: value and hue, fluid dynamics, ecology, acoustics. More than I can name. 

Settle. Rest. Reframe. 

       (with up so floating many stars chill)

Rest again. Hear yourself think. Hear yourself. Think. Hear.

Red-crested finches peck among the weeds; grasses, really, and scruffy rosettes without stalks. Lichen and lizards flourish. Raptors bank and glide. 

The sun rises behind my pillow, the moon arcs above my desk.

       weeds stars sun moon

And spiders.

From my wide window, what I briefly mistook for stars: leggy beads of light crossing the night sky, piloting in from the coast.