Knowing from The Farming Life | listen in QuickTime [opens in a new window] or in streaming RealAudio |

Summer mountain, magic meadow,
the mysterious weave of flowers
and grasses, and weeds,

     the hard question of what is native
     to this place, and what is not.

But does the botanist in me always have
to point his finger inwardly, tapping off

whole indices of the species of pastures
and fields like some might look for

     all the A's or B-flats in
     a symphony,

neatly sorted, counted, placed
in a row?

     If you ask him to sing the note
     of a particular plant, always,
     his pitch must be perfect.

But he'll probably never confess to you,
although he'd like to, that, the more
he seems to know, the more difficult it is to
admit freely like a child to others, that,

     this plant, the name of which seems
     to elude him, he now sees for the
     very first time.

(On the European Continent, one must venture up into the land
far above the trees, above 2000 meters or so, to enter a realm
which to this day is still entirely pristine and natural. Here we find a
place free of the confusion of false competition between largely indigenous
species—so characteristic of the lowlands—
caused by the centuries of misuse of the land.)

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