Now you fear joy—as though a flattened hybrid
could sate appetite, green that was its origin
bleached nearly white.
Hot-housed, plastic-bagged—will that be
the meal? or what grows in the marsh,
its mud-flanged heart.
Eat your peck of dirt your mother heard
her mother say, the soup free of purity’s
temporary money.
You’ve trimmed house, pruned career, composted
old griefs. One of the first seasonings recorded
was celery’s bitter leaf.
Your hands will lever from a final bed, elbows angle
like a flail. Where tight ribs meet on a tough stalk
your finger traces insect trails to the crease.
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
