The burdock no one dug for spring tempura
or a boast of victory over taproot
leafs out vast and ribbed. Its stalk
crests the human head, blossoming magenta.
During August the young burr scratches
shoulders, teases clothes. Mercy will vanish
as it dries and the winds whisper
a pox on the horse’s tail, the neat edge of a lawn.
Persistent as shark or cockroach
burdock remembers ferns high as trees,
brontosaurus necks lengthening until their pea-heads
could chew enormous fiddleheads, sharp cold
or claws sudden in the belly bringing them to earth.
In daylight and darkness throughout nature’s
mammal dreams, burdock heard first the apes
who walked, sure they would wear the crown.
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
