Meadow Grass

For Marie Mellinger

There is more to this meadow under the mountains than

mere names

of fescue, blue Timothy, panic grass, Fox sedge, hop

sedge-but my eyes

keep coming back to the dark strokes of plaintain, each

head as if surrounded

by a ring of pale insects, a curious, almost ugly crown

The Cherokee called these weeds "Footprints of

Englishmen"

Wherever the settlers went the plaintain grew, broad leaves

escaping under their heels, the wayward wagon tracks

grew like dark stars on the banks of a Devon lane

seen here against clay of the same colors: oxblood to

orange,

foxbrush, fernseed, the outrageous rust of men

washed into creeks in the runoff of heavy rains

mingling Greek blood and Trojan

like Scamander in the old tale

some settlers had by heart, and more never heard of

The roots of red flowers went to the chiefs and warriors

Yellow and white were squaw flowers, went to the

mending of women

Children sucked on the creeping stems of the pea plant

and grew eloquent

in a language that no longer mattered. It was the

settlers' names

that caught up with the changing meadows-wort, balm,

and bane

Gerard and Culpepper claimed them

Not the Seven Bark, nor the lovecharm Pipsissewa profited

in the eclipse of the Sun Spirit and the Star Maiden

only the transplanted plaintain-spear, vinegar sponge,

corona of insects

only the Deptford Pink, Venus's Looking Glass,

Mouse-Ear....

The weed-strong invaders clung like pea plant to the alien

clay

I would escape a moral if I knew how

or remake one if I could stop my wandering

The grass changes under my feet. Words, names, change

in my mouth

under a shifting, mostly indifferent sky