Mary Grace Bertulfo

Home, prairie-muck dried

onto the seams of my field pants,

hiking boots splattered with mud,

hair in pleasant disarray.

The scent of freedom

still clings to me.

Just an hour before,

by watch-time,

by two-legged time,

by analog hands or digital face,

I stood in a place

14,000 years in-the-making,

a glacier’s passing,

strewn with dolomite and limestone

crumbling, soft-edged rocks,

and the whimsy of a universe

where lands stretch, wrinkle,

move in slow motion.

Barbara gave me her tour

of this prairie she nurtures

which belongs to all Chicagoans.

(But really isn’t it clear by now -

all wild places

are God’s first?)

Gray praying mantis cocoon,

pasture rose topped by

a berry-looking ovary,

drooping little blue stem grass;

we met on sacred ground

where she pointed out

how females recreate nature,

how life goes on

through our tenacity.

~ MGB

Inspired by a morning at Ted Stone Preserve and an interview with Barbara Birmingham,

site steward there with her husband George for 14 years.

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