Flower for the Day Yellow Crownbeard

This time of year for almost a month the yellow crown beard (Verbena heliathoides) line the far meadow edge from the south down the hill all the way to the north base and then back east past the dog pen.  They are a native asters.  They are tall perennials with hairy winged stems and alternate leaves.  Each composite flower has tubular disc flowers surrounded by about twelve rays.  VERBESINA Dark does not fall: it rises from the soil, seeping along the flattened grass of the dim path and flowing up trees already black, night’s conduits, forked darkening against the retreating light, while below them in the field the crownbeard on its winged stem makes a last effort, waggling its two or three yellow rays, lifting its small cluster of disc petals in imitation of the sun—though its leaves have gone quiet already, and the pollinators sleep their insect sleep. * Sleep is just a way to talk about what happens in the dark, what the cells do, what color green is, when no light shines on it. The crownbeard holds still now, nothing moves under the streetlights in the ramifying subdivisions. Wings close, and petals. Eyes see nothing that is not inward and radical. There are boundaries, such as where stem becomes root, and where the taproot probes among stones, and we may travel them, through capillaries and waterways and geographies of decomposition. Underground is like aboveground inverted, a reflection of sorts, uncertain and hopeful as seedheads at seedtime. ….. Maura Hill