The Summer Winds A Prose Poem

Natural Beauty

A detailed drawing; Crosby created a book of drawings of objects collected on the beach

skills when they got out. At the end of the semester, she bound each inmate’s drawings and specimens together for them to remember all they learned about each one. “I used to tell them that if they found themselves in with the wrong crowd, to excuse themselves and go draw because when you draw, you’re in your own world, and the things going on around you don’t matter.” An inmate in his 50s told her he hadn’t drawn since he was in high school and had forgotten how much he loved it.” That experience has stayed with her. “Teaching is often a thankless job, but this job was so rewarding. You just have to eke out the small victories as your reward.”

That job and inspiration from English naturalist Mark Catesby fueled Crosby’s passion for drawing plants. Works by Catesby, whose years sketching and collecting plants and animals of the Eastern Coastline and The Bahamas were sadly eclipsed a century later by the better-known John James Audubon. However, it remains the bestillustrated record of flora and fauna in North America. When Crosby and her husband bought a house on a “skinny little island” in The Bahamas called Eleuthera, she realized she didn’t recognize a single species. But she did know she was walking paths that her mentor, Catesby, had trod. Curiosity piqued, the artist set out to remedy the situation. She regularly visited the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve operated by The Bahamas National Trust. The 30-acre preserve is a research center for traditional bush medicine, a facility for indigenous plant and tree propagation, and an educational center focusing on the importance of native vegetation. “They have a fabulous botanist there, and I started sending him drawings of plants to identify for me. One day I asked if they might be interested in putting the drawings together for notecards or something to sell in their gift shop. They liked that idea, so I send them a bunch every year.” They had an idea for Crosby, offering her a job as Botanical Artist for the Levy Preserve and asking her to spend five months on the island to draw each native plant from living specimens. She accepted, but before she could begin, Covid hit, bringing its travel restrictions and complications.

Not one to sit still for long, Crosby turned to her own backyard, pressing and drawing South Carolina native species. Calling on USC’s A.C. Moore Herbarium for help identifying each plant, Crosby soon began riding her bicycle all over town looking for specimens to draw. I looked in all kinds of nooks and crannies, parking lots, parks, and nature trails. “You know, lots of what we call weeds are just plants in the wrong places. I found so many beautiful plants. But, unfortunately, with so much development going on, I worry that some of these things might soon just be gone.”

Setting herself a goal of identifying, pressing, and drawing one hundred of the area’s native species, Crosby has already amassed an impressive collection. She notes where each one is found, and the Herbarium has already determined that some have been found out of their normal range or are simply scarce. Though she has toyed with donating her collection to the Herbarium, those fortunate enough to have had a peek at her work urge her to publish the collection.

Whether her search for flora finds her in the islands or riding her bicycle around Summerville, Laura Crosby’s talents are a gift that will long be cherished by those who study plants and by those of us simply enamored of her artistry. And there is no doubt that somewhere, Mark Catesby is very proud. AM

by Ellen E. Hyatt

Evie never knew a boy who had a bird for a pet. Mostly, boys kept company with dogs and frogs. When her friend James got a pet snake, she screamed, and did not like him anymore. But Mitchell's pet was a canary. That's why they met . . . on a day when summer was arriving on a westerly wind in a town, sweet and small in a place called The Carolinas. South Carolina, actually, where her parents sent her to live with Kit—Aunt (not "ant") Kit because they had to work on a "sep-a-ra-tion." Not sure what that was, Evie knew it happens after doors slam on lots of loud, mad-mean wicked words. And you cry. A lot. Especially at night. Her mom and dad did promise Evie that she'd be back North by her 8th birthday which was 55 days away.

Mitchell appeared in the strawberry patch where Evie was picking berries for shortcake. He was sing-talking for Lolli, his canary who got out of its cage while getting a little sun on the porch next to Aunt Kit's. Evie looked at the boy—saw the tears in his blue eyes—and did the only thing she could think of. She threw her arms around him and kissed him on his right cheek, just like Grandma up North did to her. She'd circle Evie softly against that bosom pillow where Evie learned to count heartbeats and blessings. Having no soft pillow over her heart, Evie held Mitchell a few seconds, then joined him in singing for Lolli.

The sun had shrunk to the size of an orange behind trees when Mitchell and Evie were eating strawberry shortcake with Aunt Kit's whipped cream to celebrate Lolli who had returned herself and her birdsong.

All summer long, Evie and Mitchell shared the sweet that only comes when you are almost 8, even if helping Aunt Kit water plants with sour pickle juice and getting dirty fingernails while transplanting hosta in new soil, which was said by Mitchell's mouth as "soul." Yes, he did—he called it new "soul." That summer they felt molecules from all kinds of winds—night winds, ill, wild, rainy, rowdy winds. Refreshed winds, wandering and gentle enough to blow dandelion seed into and make wishes. It was a time when they did not need to know what "straw-in-the wind" meant; nor that a wind could be called Mariah"; that a North wind takes a lover away, breaking a heart like Aunt Kit's, or that too much happiness could forecast sorrow.

The two of them listened to the state bird, a wren calling tea-kettle-tea-kettle-tea-kettle-tea, and whose babies once hatched in a pot full of pansies. One day after supper with less than a week left in Evie's stay—just as Aunt Kit was reading them a poem about wild geese heading home. Right then. Wild geese above them in formation seemed to be heading home too.

Years later when the diagnosis came to her in her bedroom in her home in Boston, Evie asked her granddaughters for her jewelry box and distributed the contents. She asked for the bowl of strawberries in the refrigerator, her bible, "The Summer Wind" by Frank Sinatra. She also asked them to bring to her Carolina, the sixth generation of canaries she loved and Mary Oliver's poems. She began reading "West Wind," bookmarked with a photo of two summery children blowing dandelion seed into a summer wind. AM