September 2022
Bio Note: Back in my beyond is a border to the woods that deserves wildflowers. I've spent the summer noting where I can find stands of black-eyed susan, chicory, and possibly Queen Anne's lace to collect seeds for this buffer zone where some big limbs fell down in winter storms, opening the land up. I always have a pair of pruners in the side pocket of my car. Kind of like always having a pen and paper in one's purse.
Self Portrait as Fall
Milkweed pods split
to let thoughts float off, seeds
wrapped in silk. To wherever.
This river flows low despite the rains
that encourage the lace gills of mushrooms
and caps for slugs to crawl on, feasting.
My goldenrod bows full heads
after rainstorms clear the night
and dead twigs drop to the ground.
I judge how the harvest moon burnishes
the haze to silver while flames of sumac
demand that I acknowledge the touch
of change. My loneliness washes
herself in rainwater. Hands, chill and clean,
plant twelve daffodil bulbs –
particulars buried deep in duff
to rise when I look
to possibility, shape shifting.
Chicory
Chicory grows out of a crack in hot pavement.
Over summer I watched for the scraggly weed
to go seedy. You didn’t know this.
The garden is mine. You never saw I craved
open-sky blue.
The seed didn’t sprout. A transplant did not
take, withered, dried to anonymous stick.
When a weed cannot thrive, you learn
something bitter. Blue.
I moved three thousand miles. You noticed,
what makes a mouth pinch up mean.
I transplanted chicory here down
by the mailbox where I won’t hear
from you and I won’t write you either.
What’s funny? Some say chicory is a remedy
for heart failure. I stick with this chicory,
a faith in what thrives until I cook
it up in butter. Mellowed. Or watch it blue.
©2022 Tricia Knoll
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