Botanist

Sweden, 1986

The season leaning into

winter in Uppsala, my friend

Lennart and I

warm up with coffee in

a second-floor café. Look

out the window

at the year-end remnants

of Linnaeus' Garden, speak

of the harmony

of rows, the rage for order.

Remembering the Latin cry

for Clarity, I

see now what I lack, wonder

why this handsome young

translator of plays

and poems chose to take on

a voice lost in wild and

unnamed grasses where

birds, so namelessly alive,

return from unknown regions every

spring, to swoop

where gold untitled flowers

light leaf-fossils through

old winter's mud.