Lost and found is my eureka! blog, my rediscovery of my short fiction and poetry submissions published in literary magazines and university literary journals some decades ago. Interspersed, occasionally, with more recent, hitherto unpublished pieces.
There are vestiges of the small treasures, past their prime, already bloomed, the flower heads dried, foliage yet maturing, still proud, but devoid of the evanescent bloom. There are in evidence others with similar foliage to those whose presence we hunt, but they are unremarkable lilies, their broad, spear-shaped leaves deep green and promising, the flowers wan and unprepossessing.
Mountain sorrel is in bloom, and so too blackberries, with their sharp, white, starry flowers. Patches of yellow hawkweed and buttercups sit alongside the deep forest trail, close to lushly swirling ostrich ferns. Dogwood begin to form their floral panicles and a meadow's-worth of bunchberry, their cheery white faces in peer-review bloom follow our curious presence.
Then here, and there, sometimes shy sometimes bold, in grand isolation and group sequestration, behind and beneath ferns and hemlock branches, pale pink, white and robustly blushing, they display themselves, the grand dames of the moist forest floor, those Ladies Slipper orchids with their ballooned, nodding heads held proudly above the rich humus of the forest soil, and the spray of the mountain stream.
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