V E R S E and I M A G E

[with poems from The Ecopoetry Anthology]

Ethnobotanists recognize that the difference between a poison, a medicine, and a narcotic is often just a matter of dosage. This pungent observation is found in my favorite wildflower guide under the entry for Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea), which is in the wild carrot or parsley family, Apiaceae. Members of the family include vegetables – carrot, celery, parsnip – and ubiquitous seasonings – cumin, coriander, fennel, dill, and many more. They also include the most toxic plant in North America, Water Hemlock; a small nibble of the root will be fatal. Deliciousness and poison, nurture and death, they surround us.

My father was recently released from inpatient rehab after suffering a series of strokes at age 96. My sister and I took turns living at their home for two weeks, first to watch over Mom and drive her to visit Dad, then to get him resettled. Now it’s down to me to carry him to his various appointments, field questions from home health, pay the bills. All that stuff. Meanwhile, Dad’s neighbors call him the bionic man. His speech has fully returned, his appetite’s robust, he can creep around the block upheld by his Lexus of all walkers. He is surrounded by a glow of resilience.

Dad’s glow is enhanced by one apparent deficit left by the stroke – any awareness of his mortality. Perhaps it’s simply the great good fortune of being upright and breathing, but he seems to have discarded many of his former worries, including not even seeming to worry that he’ll have another stroke. Be happy, Dad – I’ll take over the worrying. It’s my job to worry, and to remind you that it’s not safe to stand up without your walker. I’ll be the one who checks your pill cartons and makes sure you’re taking everything correctly. I’m keeping the refrigerator full; you just decide what to tell the caregiver to fix for your supper. Simply let this moment surround you and Mom. Enjoy.

Last year I gave my backpacking buddy Mike a t-shirt I see him wearing often: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger . . . Except Bears, Bears Will Kill You. What really cracks us up is that on all those hikes we took, we wanted to see a bear! From a responsible distance, of course, not licking our face in the middle of the night. I can honestly say that this stroke which didn’t kill Dad has not made him physically stronger (until you compare him to the median 96-year old). Or mentally stronger – he’s pretty fuzzy some days and wouldn’t be able to put into words this transformation. He can’t express verbally just where he resides on the plane of mindful acceptance, but he is looking forward to the next good dinner.

May there yet be dinners aplenty. Within the flickering shadows of destruction, my Father, may you be surrounded by joy.

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Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and Breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

Joy Harjo
from The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, San Antonio, Texas, © 2020)

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Leading us into Earth Day on April 22, these poems are from The Ecopoetry Anthology, edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street, with an excellent introduction by Robert Hass (Trinity University Press, San Antonio, Texas, © 2020).
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is winner of Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.
Donald Hall has served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. His many honors include the Robert Frost Silver medal and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
Lola Haskins serves on the Board of Florida Defenders of the Environment and has won the Florida Book Awards Silver Medal for Poetry.

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Digging

One midnight, after a day when lilies
lift themselves out of the ground while you watch them,
and you come into the house at dark
your fingers grubby with digging, your eyes
vague with the pleasure of digging,

let a wind raised from the South
climb through your bedroom window, lift you in its arms
– you have become as small as a seed –
and carry you out of the house, over the black garden,
spinning and fluttering,

and drop you in cracked ground.
The dirt will be cool, rough to your clasped skin
like a man you have never known.
You will die into the ground
in a dead sleep, surrendered to water.

You will wake suffering
a widening pain in your side, a breach
gapped in your tight ribs
where a green shoot struggles to lift itself upwards
through the tomb of your dead flesh

to the sun, to the air of your garden
where you will blossom
in the shape of your own self, thoughtless
with flowers, speaking
to bees, in the language of green and yellow, white and red.

Donald Hall
from The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, San Antonio, Texas, © 2020)

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Prayer for the Everglades

A gumbo-limbo swoons in the arms of an oak.
A royal palm, smooth as sunless skin, rises
against blue. In this whole untouched world
there seems only wind, the grass, and us.
Now silent lines of wood storks appear,
their white wings edged black. Here is
a mathematical question for your evening.
How many moments like this make a life?

But if it were not true? What if the glades
were a dream, ancient, written on the walls
of caves, so anthropologists peering into
the darkness could say only, it must have
been lovely then, when grass flowed under
the sun like a young woman’s falling hair.
What if none of it were true? What if
you and I walked all our afternoons under
smoke, and never saw beyond? What if
the tiny lichens that velvet the water, the
gators that pile like lizard on the banks,
the ibis with her sweet curved bill? What
if the turtles that plop off their logs like little
jokes? What if the sheltering mangroves?
O what if? Look up, friend, and take my
hand. What if the wood storks were gone?

Lola Haskins
from The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, San Antonio, Texas, © 2020)

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Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley and the Southern Appalachians – August 1, 2018; by Dennis Horn, Tavia Cathcart. Sponsored by the Tennessee Native Plant Society

This book focuses on Tennessee, but the Ohio Valley and Southern Appalachians are covered, encompassing all or parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North and South Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Within these pages I’ve discovered just about every wild flower I encounter here in the North Carolina foothills, or at least a close relative. The book overall is arranged by plant family with taxonomic commentary; it includes a quick thumbnail guide by color in the front; every entry has rich commentary about history and ethnobotany; my favorite section is the excellent illustrated glossary – everything the wild plant nerd could possibly want!

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