Dear readers,
I’m so excited to join KNPS as Managing Editor! Kentucky soil is chock-full of some of the most fascinating species, and I can’t wait to talk about them together.
First, I want to give a huge thanks to Susan Harkins, the previous Managing Editor, for her care of this great newsletter. I’m glad she’ll be sticking with us as an Associate Editor!
To introduce myself, I thought I’d share some of my favorite plant-finding moments in Kentucky over the last several years.
Because the dwarf-crested iris is one of my favorite sights, let me leave you with a poem:
The Wild Iris
by Louise Gluck
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.
Happy holidays, and be sure to treat yourself with some time spent among nature!
-Ciara Knisely, Managing Editor