Field Notes: Poetry Inspired by Nature

By: Jaime Eschette, Director of Marketing and Communications

When George Yatchisin isn’t working as a food, wine, and cocktail writer here in Santa Barbara, you may spot him under his favorite oak (Quercus spp.), taking in the view of Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s Meadow Section and the mountains beyond. This special spot “slays him” every time he visits.

We’re honored to have George join us in this issue of Ironwood to share his latest work, “Ars Botanica.” You can enjoy more of George’s work in his books “Feast Days” and “The First Night We Thought the World Would End.” He is also the co-editor of the anthologies “Big Enough for Words: Poems & Vintage Photographs from California’s Central Coast” and “Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds & Art.”

Ars Botanica

Fall in Santa Barbara only seems

to be missing, as here it eases,

doesn’t drop, doesn’t declare itself

spectator-ready in gaudy hues.

But

greens find a deeper peace.

What flowers, fades, leans as it must to dirt.

Still the desert willow hoists

its last

feathered and flowered salute to the heat

these foothills cradle long into the calendar.

Weep not for it, actually a

trumpet vine

hearty enough to rive rock, its blooms

a mauve and violet blast. Instead,

learn each instance of manzanita,

fierce

and ferrous branches a mere inch thick,

leaves lapping skyward, green tongues of fire.

McMinn, Pacific Mist, Carmel Sur,

Paradise.

A garden’s a poem, after all, what we

create to treasure the obvious precious

we would manage to forget, to foul.

— George Yatchisin