Mary Thibodeaux Lentz

Tips of yellow skunk cabbage appear in the bog, sloughing off dead bracken ferns and decaying maple leaves. Within a few days, a handful of yellow periscopes unwind into bright-yellow half-shells that cradle spikes crosshatched with hundreds of tiny flowers filling the chill air with an astringent, skunky smell. Their scent attracts rove beetles into […]

Remember there are lush, green redwood ravines, groves set aside for citizens’ respite and renewal, so ancient that current problems seem a wisp of spider’s web. A league of people preserved this sliver of coastline, wrested woods from those wanting only profits. Because of their persistence, I walk the Hope Trail as the morning fog […]

Yellow leaves litter our camp in under the pepperwoods. Dust rests atop the meadow’s tinder-dry grasses. Fine silt rises with each flip-flop-clad footstep down to the river. Dwindling flow lengthens cobblestone’s mossy beards. By late afternoon, sunlight is half-hearted. Wind moves upriver. Kids, playing in the deep pool, quiet. Preschoolers shiver, towels wrapped around shoulders. […]

When hiking on a forest trail if duff is wet, and light is pale, late fall and winter, early spring, then comes the fruit that fungi bring. They pop from snags and fallen trees through dung and duff, new forms are teased, and inside each, protected there grow spores that someday take to air. Some […]

Barkeep, pour me a stiff one, will ya? a climate-changer on the rocks, a big hunk of ancient ice, if ya’ got it; want to watch it melt. Thanks for turning up the thermostat. Can’t wait to see the stirrer melt into an oily, iridescent scum, a fitting offering to the green-dollar flash. I’ll need […]

—in memory of H.L. Redwood roots feel the Eel pooling and pulsing, dammed by February king tides, over spilling banks, dissolving fragile underpinnings, fueling turbid streams. Flood dispatches downed timber, loosens fallen logs from the forest floor, threads the dead among the living, to join armadas of fast-moving slash pulled downstream. As autumn turns to […]

Grow. Seek light. Never stop. Welcome winter rain and summer fog. Don’t let little nuisances bore under your bark. Work to increase your heartwood year by year. Strive upward. Spread and entwine your roots with those of your peers. Cling fast to each other in storms. Even in old age, you can sprout new roots. […]

Banana slug, suspended from a thread, Are you afraid you’ll hit your head? You twist down a strand of slime too delicate to be re-climbed. Soft eyestalks swivel round. Hanging upside-down, are you aware, do you care d   a     n       g        l      i   n g in midair?