repeating a dream: picking weeds for dinner ................................................................................#NaPoWriMo2016

Poestenkill Falls
photo by Michael P Bartlett ©

there are many weeds to pick 

from Spring through Autumn 

in upstate NY 

more specifically for those 

who think upstate begins 

after the Tappan Zee 

in the very east 

and central part of NY ...

I know in my head where 

purslane and queen anne's lace 

with its parsnippy roots, 

can be found all August long 

along the many ways 

I can take home ... 

I sit for awhile under a big pine tree 

at the edge of the Elmwood cemetery 

'bout 100 yards or so into the woods 

up the embankment 

from the Poestenkill ...

I watch the kill meander slowly 

tonguing clay and shale 

from its birth rain 

and springs 

in the Rensselaer hills 

to where it slakes 

and snakes towards 

the gorge drop into the Hudson 

and then onto 

a waiting Atlantic ocean 

I am hoping poem 
is hungry to see 

this as something 

beautiful too as I do ... 

these weeds are edible 

and I am beginning 

to beg the land a bit 

smartly bitten 

by the foraging bug 

after re-reading 

Euell Gibbons' 

'Stalking the Wild Asparagus' 

for the umpteenth time ...

I realize there is 

a funeral going on near me 

and I laugh out loud 

not caring if the mourners see me

as I seem to them to be

talking to myself ...

but I am meaning 
for them and you 
to hear me singing ...

"we are all calculations 

parts and parcels of souls

in these entropies 
of water 

the mythologies 
of tears 
are little seas 

that understand what rises 

and falls within us 
without purpose

this gift and decay 

it weighs 

each moment 

even this one 

another one 
of my poems 
ending by listening 
to the sounds 
water makes" 

EJR ©