And
now as the iron rinds over
the
ponds start dissolving,
you
come, dreaming of ferns and flowers
and
new leaves unfolding,
upon
the brash
turnip-hearted
skunk cabbage
slinging
its bunches leaves up
through
the chilling mud.
You
kneel beside it. The smell
is
lurid and flows out in the most
unabashed
way, attracting
into
itself a continual spattering
of
protein. Appalling its rough
green
caves, and the thought
of
the thick root nested below, stubborn
and
powerful as instinct!
But
these are woods you love,
where
the secret name
of
every death is life again – a miracle
wrought
surely not of mere turning
but
of dense and scalding reenactment.
Not
tenderness, not longing, but daring and brawn
pull
down the frozen waterfall, the past.
Ferns,
leaves, flowers, the last subtle
refinements,
elegant and easeful, wait
to
rise and flourish.
What
blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.
--Mary Oliver, Skunk Cabbage
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