As forest green leaves reverse in wind
dusty silver undersides’ veins bulge.
Embryonic rings of spurred seeds
halt hand’s slide at intervals
along the tall four-sided stalk.
Leonurus cardiaca has a robin
sherwood shine, a slightly darker slightly
danker nature than its fellow weeds.
Minute orchids top the taloned
seedcrowns—frillpink visors.
Whence the fomentative power
—plucked, bruised, steeped—
to break fever, lift childbirth cramp.
This poem first appeared in The Devil’s Fools (Codhill Press, 2022).
—
Mary Gilliland’s collections are In the Pool of the Sea’s Shoulder, Ember Days, The Devil’s Fools, and The Ruined Walled Castle Garden. Honors include a Cornell University Council on the Arts Faculty Grant and multimedia at the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Mary is a poet, ecologist, and occasional essayist in New York’s Finger Lakes Region where she has transformed a rocky acre of Six Mile Creek into a fawn-filled woodland garden. marygilliland.com
