In the fall, large pods form, containing many large seeds that spread out into the environment.

Milkweed is effusive and yet it is also specialized. This specialization both attracts and repels insects. Think of the sticky, toxic sap that can also be protective, or the pollination process in which insects are attracted to the nectar, but may become injured or trapped by the flower structure. Milkweed invites life, but also holds it back. There is a fascinating tension in this plant.

~ Excerpt from Craig Holdrege, “Milkweed”

Sunday sleep in. Then, a long walk with a weighty passenger on my back through the autumn morning. Over the trestle bridge under a pewter sky. In the meadow which is now a wilted, damp collection of dying grasses and wildflowers and weeds, I pocketed two fat silver seed pods of the milkweed, bursting. The remote controlled model airplanes droned above our heads doing loop de loops. We meandered home, talking and singing to the morning. And then, in our own meadow, I un-pocketed the seed pilots and we flew them in the air all over the meadow where, perhaps, one or two of them will land and be settled into the soil and germinate for the monarchs and insects to come some day along the years.Then, Frank and I went out and bought three rugs we were able to fit into the back of the car. We have been agreeing easily on so many purchases. We’re having fun. In the afternoon, after the rug errand, I listened to Paul Nemser read from his poetry manuscript, A Thousand Curves, recently republished by Lily Poetry Review Press, (publisher of my upcoming manuscript.) So many of those he read I remembered as drafts brought to our Monday night poetry workshop over the years when I had the great good fortune to write with him, to have his eyes on my own growing poems, and mostly to have his beautifully crafted poems in my ears:

Before this world,
          we passed through clouds of others.

Worlds of eye-deep islands in a coffee cup.

A world’s hand stopped, as if still holding
          a dropped phone.

Starry flourishes that can’t be read when we look toward them,
          that don’t see us when we look away.

Slopes of pumice underfoot, and pumice in air scraping lips
          down to first and last wishes.

Worlds in which I looked for you
          and worlds in which I drank from you.

Middens of matter, a dense nothingness in them,
          and spectra that luster along mothers-of-pearl.

Shore-shimmer.          shining          so many ways. . .

~ Excerpt from “An Astronomer’s Daughter,” Paul Nemser