'The Search for Beauty'

You go looking and you find spirea, which is always there, always arching its white sprays over everything, gracious and generous and slightly taken for granted. You find snakeroot, which most people walk past entirely — its white bottle-brush blooms are late-season and understated and beloved by pollinators who have not forgotten about it. Hydrangea you know. Grapevine you did not expect to find beautiful until the moment you looked closely at its tendrils, its small clusters, its ancient intention.

The search for beauty is not a metaphor. It is a practice. You go out, you look, you bring back what stopped you. These four plants stopped someone. They went into a small scroll oval and now they are forever the evidence of a particular afternoon when the land was generous and the eyes were open.

For the one who keeps looking and always finds something.