not really a poem, just a quick sketch today, from Dove Street. Do you have people like this, where you live?

5
      
                                 i.m. Richard L. Champlin

 
He came to rest   (meek one)   in an abandoned orchard
alongside a stone wall   in Foster   in the dog-days
of August   his hand atop a sapling   a full box
of peaches at his side   the perfected naturalist

 
come (ripened) to his hour   out-of-doors
and maybe the orchard   harbored apple trees
like Blackstone’s Yellow Sweeting:  he would know
having discovered a red-flowered Spicebush

 
(Lindera benzoin forma rubra R.L. Champlin)
and the national champion Pussy Willow
maintained records of notable trees
exceptionally astute and persistent observer

 
birds, turtles, and butterflies   very good storyteller
diligent keeper of written records (daily journals 
amounted to 35 vols.)   companion to most
of the old Yankees from northwestern Rhode Island

 
local lore and cultural history   locations of springs,
Native American mortar stones, threshing rocks,
charcoal mounds   reverent, modest, and private man
Redwood Library director   botany, ornithology,

 
mycology, entomology, malacology, ecology
so you might sketch a quick landscape
beneath Yellow Mountain    with the tiny figure
of the scholar   hidden there   contemplative

 
eye   beholding   mirrored   beheld now   in your eye
the absent shadow of your twin    your spouse
(Blackstone for Guillem   Eurydice for Orpheus)
(apples in a cloistered garden   sister-dove)

       
                                           2.27.04

 
*Note:  lines in italics from obituary by Peter Lockwood, published in Rhode Island Naturalist,  
v. 10 n. 2 (Nov. 2003).