Some Loves

Some Loves
Kim Goldberg

We enter the elfin wood along trillium way
barely a deer trail with rotting planks spanning rivulets
and mucky divides. We wobble-walk across, twisting
our way deeper into the moss-hung fairy glade
flanked by sword fern and once white petals
gone purple with age. You are taking me
to see the jewel—a thing so unusual
its location must be shielded from the world. You tease
the mystery and my mind leaps
to Fellini’s Satyricon where the albino hermaphrodite
diety is borne across the desert in a litter with velvet
curtains. And my mind leaps again
to John Hurt in The Elephant Man, for difference is both
worshipped and reviled. A pileated woodpecker heralds
our arrival with its wuck wuck wuck call overhead. I gaze up
just in time to glimpse its scarlet crest disappear
behind a monumental fir. At our feet
is the wonder: a four-petaled trillium known
(I am about to learn) as a quadrillium. A cone drops
nearby. The duff stirs. Deer mouse
or sprite? An invitation, or is the wildwood
arming itself? We return
to our car. A photo will be uploaded to Facebook
with no geo-locating information. It will get many likes
and some loves.

*  *  *