Tag: Tree

Dry creek bed in Kimble county, Texas: A black-and-white landscape photograph shows a broad, shallow creek winding across a dry, stony bed through scrubland. Pale gravel bars and scattered rocks border the water, while low shrubs and small leafless trees dot the banks. In the foreground, several fallen branches lie across the creek bed, including one long limb stretching diagonally through the frame and another tangled cluster of weathered wood near the opposite bank. Beyond the creek, dense brush rises toward low, gently rolling hills beneath a wide, softly clouded sky. Russell Lee, 1940, for the Farm Securities Administration (FSA). From NYPL Digital Collections.

“Creek Bed Meditation #1” * Poetry * Darren C. Demaree

aromatica poetica September 18, 2026

They were wrong, here is there. The tree that fell overnight still shimmers with flailing roots. Findings, openings, bones that can be cleared from the shale, time is a hawk & I’m a hawk & even our flights are not so elegant. It’s all bodies, awkwardly falling into each other. Think. Think. Crash. —About Darren C. Demaree— My poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, North American Review, New …

One kumquat hanging on a tree among its orange-colored fellows is targeted in crosshairs.

“Kumquat” * Flash Story * Elizabeth Bernays

aromatica poetica March 4, 2021

I turn its orange roundness between thumb and forefinger out there in the sun. Tiny points of darker color mark oil glands in the smooth surface of its skin. A slightly flattened top with a white center shows where I pulled it off the tree, and a speck of black at the bottom is left where the flower must once have been. A few brownish lines mar its perfection – some minor impact during development. Already my mouth waters and …

An osage orange (aclura pomifera) glowing and floating in black for a poem by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper.

“The Fourth of October, T’en Souvient-il?” * Poetry * John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper

aromatica poetica October 4, 2020

Amazing the ruin, the stupor of the misbegotten, fervor of memory may assuage: held long indoors, long drying and forgotten, a pinch of spruce confuses — a scent of miracles — overwhelming — brings to mind the sweetly fragrance — tiny, tart and sticky — pungent orange fruit of the Osage tree. I can see it, that tiny orange, feel it in my hand, clinging to my fingers, still perceive the faint glow it cast in my kitchen where it …

“Le Paradis Perdu” (Paradise Lost), by Paul Gauguin, 1890. Colorful painting of the tree and snake and eve in an impressionist symbolist style.

“Of Man’s First Disobedience” * Taste & Smell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost

aromatica poetica February 26, 2020

The opening lines of Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton are perhaps some of the most recognizable in all of western literature, and they begin with taste—the oh-so-delicious taste of good and evil that will get humans kicked out of Eden forever: Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruitOf that forbidden tree whose mortal tasteBrought death into the World, and all our woe,With loss of Eden, till one greater ManRestore us, and regain the blissful seat,Sing, Heavenly Muse,… A quick …