This is no pulpit but a pit,
almost a gullet, clogged
with corpses of those that wouldn’t fit
through the exit at the base of the spathe.
It generates its own heat
& a faint scent said to resemble rot
or stagnant water,
attracting fungus gnats
to the minute flowers on the spadix,
which might be male this year
& female or unisex the next.
What church could stomach
such license in the pulpit?
But then we learn how the raw
corm burns, blistering the throat,
its raphide needles causing
agonies in the gut. Only drying
or a slow roast can tame its heat.
This is pepper turnip,
dragon root, devil’s ear.
This is Jack & the candlestick together,
fire & brimstone & the unclean lip.
They lit up the hillside
under the young maples
& tulip poplars like
a harbor full of sails
or a hundred thousand bodhisattvas,
three arms extended
in a mudra of grace
to the gardeners who came
with surreptitious trowels
& the deer with their yellow teeth.
Trillium Trail has become
a veritable Sarnath.
On any visit now
the white flag of a tail
floating among the trees
is the only lambent thing.
May all beings awake.
*
Notes: A mudra is a symbolic or ritual gesture in Buddhism. Sarnath is the deer park where Gautama Buddha gave his first teaching. Trillium Trail is a real place just outside of Pittsburgh.
Long after the yellow funfair tent
with its sudden shower of pollen
& its sweet prize has been packed away,
after the bees have gone
in search of other diversions
& the forest has grown dark & thick,
the violet hosts a quieter, stranger sideshow:
the cleistogamous flower, a tent
that never opens & admits nobody.
Like a Wall Street investment firm
writing I.O.U.s to itself, it has
all the magic it needs
within its green inviolate room.
We may infer the success of its transactions
only from its conversion
into a new instrument,
with contents set for future release—
a hedge against all the vagaries
of spring & commerce.
Above the road bank where
the hepatica has just come
into bloom, carrion beetles
clamber through the quills
of a dead porcupine.
Spring azure butterflies ring
what’s left of its mouth—
a void spanned by a pair
of yellow rails—
& ignore the blossoms
swaying on their downy stems
in all the colors of the sky,
white & pink & blue.
The snow hasn’t been gone a week,
but already life & death
seem far apart. The rusty leaves
that lasted the winter out
are relaxing into the earth,
& soon will be indecipherable
even to the most ardent follower
of the doctrine of signatures
in search of liverleaf,
or those who seek respite
from dreams of snakes.
*
An earlier version of this poem appeared in a post from April 17, 2006.
How did
this trout
escape
the stream?
It’s not only
the leaves—
ichthyomorphic
& mottled,
glossy as fins—
but the salmon-
colored stem’s
leap
& arc,
& the way it falls
with a sun-
bright splash.
Note: The Latin name means “true-black green.” The black roots were widely used by Native Americans for apotropaic magic and other ritual purposes. The entire plant is toxic.
Golden groundsel, butterweed,
life root, squaw weed,
uncum root, waw weed,
false valerian, cough weed,
female regulator, cocash weed,
staggerwort, ragweed:
many were the handles
for which you once were plucked,
used as a uterine tonic, an ingredient
in Lydia Pinkham’s famous compound
(mostly alcohol) for “hysteria,”
feeble appetite, irregular menses,
cramps & backaches, prescribed
even to men for breathing troubles,
swollen testicles or sore perineum—
until the discovery of alkaloids
that can damage the liver.
“Life root,” indeed!
Now you spread in peace again
through wet woods & meadows.
Your small suns open
only for the cinnabar moth,
who mines your heart-shaped leaves
with her terrible eggs.