Orchid Hunting by Jacqueline Vigilanti

Wood-walking one day
my feet slowed

Here, I was told
I might find the Fairy-Slipper

A powdery pearl
silk bauble

that needs moist
mossy soil and

symbiosis mycorrhizal
Yet delicate as a pea

Roots fragile as the tread
of a mythic sprite

And here in thin coniferous forests
it shows

Seldom long, grows only
across summer’s solstice

If you glimpse it at all
shy bloom that

Remains hidden from light
in the ringed gloom

of leaf-laced groves
The hovering dusk-netted

loom of Calypso
I enter on tiptoe

Lest the frailest flutter
chase such rarity away

………………..

Jacqueline Vigilanti works as a librarian. She has lived in the US, Sweden, and England and writes poetry about nature and place.

Twitter: @jmvigilanti