What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Inversnaid”
A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson from Fortune of the Republic
I’ve always identified with weeds and wildflowers more than cultivated blooms. Even those which are thorny, bristly, spreading willy-nilly.
I too have undiscovered virtues – I’m fluffy, I thrive where I’m not necessarily wanted or needed, I tend to be resilient through frost, drought or flood.
The wild persistence of weeds inspires me to just let most of them be, though stinging nettles, poison oak and ivy need to keep to themselves.
Just as a wild beauty lies just beneath their weedy surface, I try to keep flourishing in harsh surroundings, a witness to a world bereft of softness.
O let them be left. O let me be left.
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The juncture of twig and branch, scarred with lichen, is a gate we might enter, singing. ~Jane Kenyon from “Things” from Collected Poems
Who’s this –alone with stone and sea? It’s just the lowly Lichen We: the alga I, the fungus me; together, blooming quietly. What do we share–we two together? A brave indifference to the weather. A slow but steady growing pace. Resemblance to both mud and lace. As we now, so we shall be (if air clear and water free): the proud but lowly Lichen We, cemented for eternity. ~Joyce Sidman “The Lichen We” from Ubiquitous
All these years I overlooked them in the racket of the rest, this symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air — tiny acid-factories dissolving salt from living rocks and eating them.
Here they are, blooming! Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it: rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and cliffs like murals!
Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly with shooting-stars and lupine at the base. Closer, with the glass, a city of cups!
Clumps of mushrooms and where do the plants begin? Why are they doing this? In this big sky and all around me peaks & the melting glaciers, why am I made to kneel and peer at Tiny? ~Lew Welch, “Springtime in the Rockies,Lichen” from Ring of Bone: Collected Poems
Back then, what did I know?
Uptown and downtown. Not north, not south, not you.
When I saw you, later, seaweed reefed in the air, you were grey-green, incomprehensible, old. What you clung to, hung from: old. Trees looking half-dead, stones.
Marriage of fungi and algae, chemists of air, changers of nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.
Like those nameless ones who kept painting, shaping, engraving, unseen, unread, unremembered. Not caring if they were no good, if they were past it.
Rock wools, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust, ash-of-the-woods. Transformers unvalued, uncounted. Cell by cell, word by word, making a world they could live in. ~Jane Hirshfield from “For the Lichens” from Come, Thief
But what is life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours — arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be. ~Bill Bryson from A Short History of Nearly Everything
I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for nearly 70 years – this farm for 30 years. The grandeur of the snow-capped mountains to the north and east and the peaceful shore to the west overwhelms everything in between. Autumn after autumn, I’ve walked past these antique apple trees, but had never stopped to really look at the landscape growing on their bare shoulders and arms. There is a whole other ecosystem on each tree, a fairy land of earth bound dryland seaweed, luxuriant in the fall rains, colorful in the winter, hidden behind leaves and fruit in the hot summer. I had never really noticed the varied color and texture all around me.
This is the world of lichen, a mixed up symbiotic cross between algae and fungus, opportunistic enough to thrive on rock faces, but simply ecstatic on absorbent bark.
It hasn’t bothered them not to be noticed as they are busy minding their own business. As poet John McCullough writes in his poem “Lichen”:
It is merely a question of continuous adjustment, of improvising a life.
When I’m far from friends or the easing of a wind against my back, I think of lichen— never and always true to its essence, never and always at home.
Instead of lifting my eyes to the hills and the bay for a visual feast, I need only open the back gate to gaze on this landscape found on the ancient branches in my own back yard.
It’s a rich life of improvisation indeed.
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Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried, but actually you’ve been planted. ~Christine Caine
I love a wild daffodil, the one that grows where she’s planted— along a wooded highway left to her own abandon, but not abandoned. Her big yellow head leaning toward or away from the sun. Not excluded but exclusive, her trumpet heralds no one, not even the Canada geese— their long-necked honks announcing their journey. She’ll be here less than a season, grace us with green slender stems, strong enough to withstand rain and spring’s early chill. And when she goes, what remains she’ll bury deep inside the bulb of her, take a part of me with her until she returns. ~January Gill O’Neil, “For Ella” from Rewilding
Our farm was homesteaded by the Lawrence family over one hundred years ago — soon afterward, someone decided to bury daffodil bulbs scattered around the yard. All these decades later, dozens of faithful heralds of spring still come up as the sun and extra hours of light call them forth. Some years they bloom in February, but most typically they wait for a more predictable welcome from the weather in March.
They are very tender, easily injured by a strong wind or late snowfall – mostly an old antique variety of fluffy double blooms, but some traditional trumpet blossoms still come up called forth by the trumpeting of the geese and swans passing over far above them.
For me, their blooming with abandon is inspiration in faithfulness and persistence, especially because of the 44 weeks per year they remain silent and buried out of sight. I have a general sense where they will appear each February, but am still surprised and impressed when they do push up through the ground. I walk around them carefully, knowing I could crush them with one firm inadvertent boot step if I am not cautious.
Once the daffodils are blooming, they encourage my hope and a promise of the spring just ahead. When the blooms wither and fade, the green spiky stems must gather the strength the bulb needs for another cycle of dormancy, so I mow around them to allow as much time as needed to replenish before disappearing underground again.
I still don’t understand how these gentle blooms somehow manage to pull me down with them into the bulb, waiting my turn alongside them while buried deep in the dark. Perhaps it is because God plants each one of us here in His holy ground, to await the ultimate wakening that calls us forth to bloom everlasting.
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As the days warm and lengthen, the grass is getting happy almost overnight. Under my window the first star of spring opens its eye on the front lawn. Yellow as butter, it is only one. But it is one, and in the nature of things, and like the multiple asterisks seeding the night sky, it will flourish and take over every grassy bank in town. I long to be prolific as the dandelion, spinning pale parachutes of words, claiming new territory by the power of fluff. The stars in their courses have bloomed an unending glory across the heavens, but here in my yard a local constellation prepares to launch multiple, short-lived, radiant coronas to proclaim the new-sprung season. ~Luci Shaw “Dandelion”
How I loved those spiky suns, rooted stubborn as childhood in the grass, tough as the farmer’s big-headed children—the mats of yellow hair, the bowl-cut fringe. How sturdy they were and how slowly they turned themselves into galaxies, domes of ghost stars barely visible by day, pale cerebrums clinging to life on tough green stems. Like you. Like you, in the end. If you were here, I’d pluck this trembling globe to show how beautiful a thing can be a breath will tear away. ~Jean Nordhaus “A Dandelion for My Mother”
We harbor a dandelion sanctuary, a safe haven from herbicides and trowels.
The lawn is filled with them now yellow spots in carpeted green which close tight at night, then open each morning as miniature reflections of the real dawn.
As a kid, I was paid a nickel to dig up each long dandelion root, restoring the blemished green yard to pristine perfection; no more yellow splotches, unruly stems, trembling transparent globes releasing scores of seedy offspring.
But it didn’t last.
The perfect lawn, like the perfect life ~unbesmirched~ is a myth.
A host of opportunistic seeds float innocently on the breeze or lie hidden deep in our soil ready to spring up again overnight.
Those spunky spiky suns and ghostly stars of fluff overwhelm my heart with joy: they take my breath away as my breath, in turn, blows them away.
On the fire escape, one stupid petunia still blooms, purple trumpet blowing high notes at the sky long after the rest of the band has packed up and gone home. ~Sarah Frehligh “December” from Sad Math
Despite two killing frosts, heavy melting rains and blowing gusts of 45mph, some of us still remain standing.
Despite all that comes at us, whether expected or unexpected, we’re still here even when everyone else has packed up and headed home.
We’re still blooming, still breathing, still shouting at the top of our lungs:
~life is pretty good~
so as not to forget blooming out of season beats giving up.
Sheep will not eat it nor horses nor cattle unless they are starving. Unchecked, it will sprawl over pasture and meadow choking the sweet grass defeating the clover until you are driven to take arms against it but if unthinking you grasp it barehanded you will need tweezers to pick out the stickers.
Outlawed in most Northern states of the Union still it jumps borders. Its taproot runs deeper than underground rivers and once it’s been severed by breadknife or shovel —two popular methods employed by the desperate— the bits that remain will spring up like dragons’ teeth a field full of soldiers their spines at the ready.
Bright little bursts of chrome yellow explode from the thistle in autumn when goldfinches gorge on the seeds of its flower. The ones left uneaten dry up and pop open and parachutes carry their procreant power to disparate venues in each hemisphere which is why there will always be thistle next year. ~Maxine Kumin “Why There Will Always Be Thistle” from The Long Marriage.
Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men Thistles spike the summer air And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.
Every one a revengeful burst Of resurrection, a grasped fistful Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up
From the underground stain of a decayed Viking. They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects. Every one manages a plume of blood.
Then they grow grey, like men. Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear, Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground. ~Ted Hughes “Thistles”
Reluctantly the summer goes In a cloud of thistledown. ~Beverly Ashour from “September”
It is armored, it is deeply rooted, it is relentless. Highly ambitious, it produces downy tasty dancing seeds ready to soar far. Generation after generation of thistles persist due to this delicate ballerinas’ flight to the next horizon.
I should be strive to be as persistent, as rooted, as determined, yet as fluffy and tender under my defensive prickles and spines.
And then, may I softly dance in the journey to the next life.
Now we are here at home, in the little nation of our marriage, swearing allegiance to the table we set for lunch or the windchime on the porch,
its easy dissonance. Even in our shared country, the afternoon allots its golden lines so that we’re seated, both in shadow, on opposite
ends of a couch and two gray dogs between us. There are acres of opinions in this house. I make two cups of tea, two bowls of soup,
divide an apple equally. If I were a patriot, I would call the blanket we spread across our bed the only flag—some nights we’ve burned it with our anger at each other.Some nights we’ve welcomed the weight, a woolen scratch on both our skins. My love, I am pledging
to this republic, for however long we stand, I’ll watch with you the rain’s arrival in our yard. We’ll lift our faces, together, toward the glistening. ~Jehanne Dubrow from “Pledge”
photo by Bette Vander Haak
Whether it is a beloved country, or a devoted marriage, there is need for loyalty to last through the difficult times and the imperfections.
We pledge allegiance to the republic of one another among acres of opinions: our differences in how we see the world contrast with our shared goals and dreams. Our stubborn persistence to stay intact is threatened by our fragile weaknesses that can easily break us asunder.
So we stand united, no matter the dissonance and the disagreements, drenched with the responsibility and accountability to make this union work, no matter what, for as long as we shall live, and much much beyond.
May we glisten with the pledge of allegiance: we can only accomplish this together.
It is a lichen day. Not a bit of rotten wood lies on the dead leaves, but it is covered with fresh, green cup lichens… All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one. ~Henry David Thoreau from his journal
Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. And seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things are alive and beautiful. ~Henry David Thoreau (journal)
I’m a bit of a lichen myself – a bit of an opportunist, thriving in drizzle, sometimes colorful but most often not.
Mostly I hang on. Persevering. At times obnoxiously tenacious.
A dreamer of fairy tale kingdoms while living simply in plain sight.
In a patch of baked earth At the crumbled cliff’s brink, Where the parching of August Has cracked a long chink,
Against the blue void Of still sea and sky Stands single a thistle, Tall, tarnished, and dry.
Frayed leaves, spotted brown, Head hoary and torn, Was ever a weed Upon earth so forlorn,
So solemnly gazed on By the sun in his sheen That prints in long shadow Its raggedness lean?
From the sky comes no laughter, From earth not a moan. Erect stands the thistle, Its seeds abroad blown. ~Robert Laurence Binyon –“The Thistle”
There isn’t much that thrives in a dry summer like this other than mounds of blackberry bushes and scattered clusters of thistle. They both are defended by thorns to keep them from being eaten by all but the most persistent and hungry grazing animals.
I admire and recognize such tenacity, knowing I too have held tightly to my own defenses to keep from being swallowed up. I approach these weeds with respect for the scars they can leave behind – their roots go deep, their seeds travel far.
We coexist because we must.
How else would beauty come from our bleeding wounds?
“Let me enjoy this late-summer day of my heart while the leaves are still green and I won’t look so close as to see that first tint of pale yellow slowly creep in. I will cease endless running and then look to the sky ask the sun to embrace me and then hope she won’t tell of tomorrows less long than today. Let me spend just this time in the slow-cooling glow of warm afternoon light and I’d think I will still have the strength for just one more last fling of my heart.”
– John Bohrn, Late August
Everything is made to perish; the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so. No, he thought. The wonder of anything is that it was made in the first place. What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking? ~Paul Harding
There are times when all appears to be perishing, especially in the dying time of year when the world is drying up and blowing away like dust storms. The obituary pages predominate in the paper, accompanying an overload of bad news, mass shootings and suicide bombings. All appears to be perishing with no relief or hope.
Even the leaves are bleeding red.
But it is the waning light and shortening days coloring my view like smoky haze in the sky painting a sunset deep orange. Darkness is temporary and inevitably helpless; it can never overcome the light of all things made.
Life persists in the midst of perishing because of the cataclysm of a loving and bleeding God dying as sacrifice. Nothing, nothing can ever be the same.
“God goes where God has never gone before.” ~ Kathleen Mulhern in Dry Bones
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