We let the pokeweed flourish in the yard even though we know it to be toxic.
We wait for September to sit in its shade on the baked ground and look up through its broad leaves, feeling empurpled.
We quote Thoreau from this same time of the year in 1858:
"A man shall rush by and trample down plants as high as his head, and cannot be said to know that they exist...yet if he ever favorably attend to them, he may be overcome by their beauty.
"Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.
"Heaven, or paradise, might be defined as the place which men avoid."
copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved
