1.

I thread my way through the powder-white trunks of Pando, a grove of trees, but a single living thing, scarred and black-knotted. This aspen clone, a colony of one, weaves its wood as summer winds blow, moving the tree spires in waves. Warm gusts make the tree’s golden discs shudder and chatter above me. The elder trees remember the language of whispered leaves but forget themselves as their leaf-drop continues into winter. I remember a priest’s words: “We are all Pando.” Root sprouts are disappearing, chewed by deer having free roam. But for now, a slow, soft quieting of the tree’s murmur.

2.

A large deed rock exists on Rattlesnake Hill near Worcester, Massachusetts describing land granted to God in metes and bounds. Having purchased the land, a man had thought to build a temple there. So, he first dedicated it by etching words into the large boulder bedded in the earth. The boulder speaks of the land’s boundaries that the man had walked, marked by a chestnut tree in a wall (now gone), a stake and stones (also lost to time), the names of neighbors (since forgotten). In spite of all his care, the man’s deed rock was unknown to those nearby for well over 150 years.

3.

The ballet Giselle has a classic form: dancers’ bodies structured and held together with classical discipline. A mystery of together and apart. Limbs float full of grace, moving in complement. Costumes made of froth. Fairytale-unreal while the story tells of love and betrayal and reconciliation. Calling on his heritage from Bangladesh, Akram Khan weaves classic Kathak dancing into a new form of Giselle. Dancers writhe, covering the entire stage as one sharp statement. Draped bodies turn into a churning form. Hands, feet, and torsos bend and weave as neck, head, and face tell the old, lost story.

4.

A Seattle-based human composting company called Recompose wants me to consider turning my mortal coil into mulch. They are part of the “green burial movement,” and their parent company, a New York start-up called Transcend, will soon roll out this venture in the United States. For a reasonable investment, they buy land targeted for reforestation. I am to provide the raw material, buried and wrapped in flax linen, surrounded by wood chips and fungi. They will top my plot with a suitable tree, two to four years of age. But I will miss the funeral flowers, the slow walking, and the old hymns.

5.

As I hear “Halcyon Days” sung in the darkened chapel, the breath of the singers gives up the pulse of the music, beginning with a snowy softness. Voices, simple harmonies, slip easily through the air as I listen. The words speak of sacred days and well-worn prayers. They call us to rise up to that past world continually re-creating itself from seasons of traditions and old ways. Like a murmuration of swallows, the singers take their direction from their own sound, the rushing of their vocal wings, and the feel of wind currents of their own making. A confident and gentle movement toward a shared grace.

*Author’s Note:

The cadralor consists of “five short, unrelated, highly-visual stanzas.... [The] fifth stanza acts as the crucible, illuminating the gleaming thread that runs through the entire poem” and bringing all of the stanzas together into a love poem. “By ‘love poem,’ we mean that the fifth stanzaic image answers the compelling question: ‘For what do you yearn?’” (from Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor).

Publisher’s Note:

Much gratitude to Kate Flannery for the gift of the link to a lovely video, to which we now invite you, dear reader, to treat yourself—

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4rR4qQcdSw

—Halcyon Days, a poem by Jacqueline Goldfinger set to music by composer Melissa Dunphy, and performed by The Choirs of Pembroke College, Cambridge, conducted by Anna Lapwood.

Kate Flannery

is an Editor-at-Large for The Journal of Radical Wonder. She lives in a small college town where she also practices law. Her essays, poetry, and fiction have been published in Chiron Review, Shark Reef, The Ekphrastic Review, and Pure Slush as well as other literary journals. She was a finalist in Bellingham Review’s 2022 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction.