Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Caltha palustris
Nectar oozes from a pair of pits
beside each carpel in the crowded flower
variously known as water gowan
or meadow gowan, marsh
marigold or Marybuds,
water dragon, solsequia,
great bitterflower, king cups,
crazy bet or leopard’s foot,
May blobs or water blobs,
mollyblobs, pollyblobs,
cowlily or cowslip,
soldier buttons, palsywort,
water bubbles or water-goggles,
meadowbouts, capers,
water crowfoot, verrucaria,
gollins or the publican,
drunkards, gools.
Mitella diphylla
After pollination, the flower cup
turns into a blunderbuss,
expelling its tiny seeds
when a raindrop strikes.
Was it this, or the flower’s
fringe of white feathers,
that made the Iroquois think
they could drink a decoction
& rid the body of bad luck,
expel it in their vomit?
Sometimes, too, they’d use it
to bathe a gun that didn’t
bring down game
or ease one drop
into a sore eye,
surgical as the tongue
of a halictid bee reaching
between the lashes.
Icicles at sunrise: no even-toed ungulates
come plodding to the cherry, therefore.
But a titmouse lands there, the peachy-
brown streak in her breast the same rust
in a tree sparrow’s cap or a broomsedge stem.
Some days are copper-lined, are meat and wine
and crackling logs the little match girl strikes
flint after flint to enter. I’d take her hand
and sit her on our laps, wrap her in a tufted
comforter. Small songbird, acrobatic forager,
you’ve buried your hoard of morsels so long
in the ground— pine and beech, oak, fruit
of the candleberry. My desire is also quietly
eager for spring. Nothing much yet on the ground—
but pry open the secrets in each gravelly seed;
carry them aloft, bear some to the one I love.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.17.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
“Everything changes, nothing remains without change.”
—Gautama Buddha
All day I moved from task to task— washing and dressing, raising the shades, putting away clean dishes and utensils from last night as we waited for our youngest daughter to eat her bread and cheese and jam. We piled into the car and drove to church; there too it took some work to listen and tune in to the service, to homilies of being lost and found, the shuffle of collection baskets making their rounds. The wheel of standing-sitting-kneeling, attended by hymns and prayer. After church, we stopped for coffee and sandwiches, the Sunday paper; then went to the Asian grocery for rice (we like the “Milagrosa” brand), sweet bread and tea, mustard greens, and bitter melon. I bought three tiny good luck charms for the lunar new year: fingerling gourd with a buddha hidden in its hem, small brass urn, three-tiered pagoda. At noon, the streets were still surprisingly empty, not even harboring their usual noise. When the wind moved, bands of blue moved east and closed just before the sun could enter them. Everything grew still. When the wind died, it was completely quiet for fifteen seconds. I thought I saw a thousand-armed goddess step through the clouds; just one slight gesture of her hand multiplied in the air and prismed. A truck rumbled past. A siren blared. All around, colors fractured and glowed like pieces of stained glass.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.16.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Trillium undulatum
Painted lady, late riser,
you rush out of the ground,
get pollinated on the fly
sometimes before
your petals fully open,
so that within one day
after emergence they are
already turning translucent,
your pink makeup fading
as the light-flooded
forest dims to leaf-out.
But that’s your true
element, isn’t it?
The shade.
Even unpollinated
you are wavy, vague
around the edges,
ready to let go of
all color & get
the opposite of a tan.
Only a well-timed cold snap
can hold your snow.
Philavery /fil-a-vuh-ri/ n. An idiosyncratic collection of uncommon and pleasing words.
Unable to sleep till late (or early), I dithered
and tossed in the abstemious dark then clicked
on the lamp switch and sat up to read, finally
settling on my red-bound copy of Foyle’s Philavery
(a present from my daughters two Christmases ago).
I’m not sure how it is that my mind drifted
to the issue of consonants— specifically those
that bump up in threes in the middle of words,
like castaways on an island. They sit shoulder
to shoulder and pass the coconut shell dipper
from hand to hand as they count sharks’
triangles in the morning and punched tin lights
overhead at night, having given up any real
hope for rescue. By then I’d begun to find more
and more of these words– like “esssse,” which
was the way some medieval 14th century texts
spelled what we know today as “ash”; or, more
familiar: “rhythm”, “craftsmanship”, and “ironclad”
(the latter reminding me of the Battleship Wisconsin,
berthed at the riverfront not even a quarter mile
from where we live). So when my husband, grumbling,
asked if I would like a ham sandwich (notice the three
consonants snug in the middle there, not even needing
any mustard or mayo?), what could I do but nod my head
absently and muse aloud how it would be great if we had
some schnapps to go with that. While he was downstairs,
I’d drifted to Chelmno, a little town in Poland (its name
derives from an old Slavic word for hill), then wandered
some more afield, picking up a few hitch-hiking doubles
to keep company with the others: one sweet-talking
beekeeper, one slightly facetious bookkeeper, one gay
gypsy who’d been to Albuquerque. When morning
arrived, they marveled at the sight of a snowpack
glowing in soft light. I knew that a dog was barking
somewhere in the hills of Pennsylvania, and hoped he
would not cause an avalanche. When snow and ice melt,
they feed the rivers and the streams, but sometimes
cause flooding. You wake when you hear a resonant
knock in the dark, even though it could be only a woodpecker.
But then it could also be the sound of a new door opening.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.15.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Trillium erectum
Wake-robin, red trillium,
stinking Benjamin: a three-faced flower.
It lives by subterfuge.
Its stem is really a scape,
its leaves are really bracts,
sessile, glabrous, cuneate
or attenuate at the base,
broadly ovate, with margins
entire & acuminate apex.
The rank-smelling, self-
compatible flowers alternate
petals with sepals, three of each,
& six stamens ring the single,
three-part pistil.
To us they are wake-robins,
flushed with good cheer,
but they tempt frustrated
Calliphorid flies with the scent
of a blood-red corpse,
& get pollinated for nothing.
Later they will lure ants
with an edible bait, the elaiosome:
a fleshy appendage to the seed,
itself inedible — designed
to be discarded in the colony’s
rich compost, & there take root.
So many masks!
Will the real Trillium erectum
please stand up?
Claytonia virginica
Prim pink pinstripes
beckon from the wet soil
beside the creek. But like
most beauties, they’re choosy
about their suitors,
unmoved except by just
the right bee visiting
in just the right order:
one day they hokey-
poke their stamens out;
the next, it’s the pistel’s turn.
Petals close even for a cloud.
And when flowering’s done,
they do their best
to pass for grass.
Who wouldn’t be wary
with such a large
& edible heart?
*
This is the first of what I hope will be a series of poems about spring wildflowers native to eastern North America, in response to macro photos by naturalist and blogger Jennifer Schlick. Even though Jennifer calls herself WinterWoman, and I’m quite fond of the season too, I figure a few of you might be ready to think spring thoughts…
“I drink from a small spring,
my thirst exceeds the ocean.”
—Adam Zagajewski
Spanish folk music plays today on the sound system of this Turkish coffee shop where I come to sit and write and use the free wireless network (well, really, not completely free if you figure in the cost of the $1.64 glass copita of Turkish tea I’ve ordered, plus tax). A chorus warbles the refrain from “Granada” and ends with a flourish of castanets and foot-stomping. Then more guitars, more singing. I can almost see the women’s arms dipping and lifting, maneuvering their ruffled bata de cola skirts, which troubles the oversized flowers they’ve pinned in their hair. I notice that the girl tending the espresso machine has cut her long hair since I was here last; she’s looped a scarf of silvery grey around her neck though everything else she wears is still black. On the coffee stand by the window, someone has placed a pair of embroidered felt slippers, perhaps the kind a minor pasha might have worn indoors or on his way back from the bath. Outside, a skim of snow’s imprinted on the walk with winding, parallel lines of arrows, like a child’s map to buried treasure. The sun, guest maitre d’ this noon, parts the potted greens and signals for me to take my time, cup my fingers around the bowl; sip the tea while it’s hot, but slowly.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.14.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
“What is it that really matters? For the poppy, that the poppy disclose its red: for the cabbage, that it run up into weakly fiery flower.”
—D.H. Lawrence
The kid wearing nothing but a hoodie and jeans
swoops across the boulevard on his skateboard.
The light changes. No snow, but it’s freezing.
Cars are distant specks, always moving closer.
Early enough in the day, or in between.
The wind has scoured the branches clean,
but stone dogs and lions (stubbornly paired,
flanking doorways) still wear their coats
of snow. Beneath the scratchy layers of wool
and viscose, I want to rub my hands together
to make a little flame; to steeple my fingers
then spring the gates open to a frenzy of wings,
nestled bodies— all those jeweled dreams
tumbling from the rafters and onto my lap.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.13.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.