Wild & Bland

The ground outside my back door is carpeted with these strawberry plants. You can see the prototypical three-penny leaves, the white and yellow flowers, the small red fruit like knots in some invisible thread.

Of course, anyone who grew up in the midwest knows these tiny strawberries are not the real deal. They're beautiful mirages, the fruit-world equivalent of The Emerald City. They're an old man pulling strings, twenty monopoly benjamins, silicone breasts, RuPaul. They shimmer, then burst. They taste, if they taste at all, of dust.

In late spring, in early summer, nature is Glory. It's generosity, abundance, renewal, grace, everything we've been taught. But it's also that first, terrible savor of disappointed hope.