Early Meadow-Rue

Thalictrum dioicum

Dioicum: separate houses. Here the male & there the female.

Clouds rise from the male plant & dangle yellow weather. From the female plant, ten-fingered hands stretch in all directions.

Without scent or nectar, what flying thing will be their go-between? There’s only the wind.

But this meadow-rue has abandoned the meadow, so it must flower early or the canopy will close & the wind will retire to the treetops.

Quicksilver-weed. The leaves aren’t even open all the way, & already the male flowers are vanishing

into the fertile household of the earth.