Soul Mountain Retreat #3

Economy (with a nod to Thoreau)

In my rush to leave home I forgot the cash I'd meant to bring with me to Soul Mountain. Besides a credit card and a slender checkbook with just a few checks left in it, I had only a few dollars stuffed into the side of my purse. Or so I thought. But after two days of settling in and unpacking at my leisure, cleaning out my pockets and my purse, I've found 39 dollars and a large fist full of change. What might have seemed meager before is riches now. The wealth I carried here and didn't even know it!

That's my hope for these few weeks--to find the riches I've brought with me and didn't even know it. So far I've not been disappointed. This afternoon is the first time I've been able to sit down for an extended period of time to push beyond journaling in my writing, and already a sort of poem has broken through the matted leaves in my brain, years of bloom pressed down and composted for later . . .

Skunk Cabbage

At first a pair of leaves unfurls
one shaped like a tablespoon,
one a butter knife
of brightest green,
and as they take in light
they spread their girth and curl to face each other:
the tablespoon becomes a trowel in size,
the butter knife a tablespoon.

When they've grown tall as leaves of young romaine,
they spread again and this time curl apart
to make a space for new twins birthed
between them from the mother root:
another tablespoon of green,
another slender butter knife,
which in their turn
will curl again then spread,
admitting space for other shoots,
and so the family's large embrace enlarges
to make room for newest members
yet still preserves an outer layer that gives
it bulk and shape.

Beside this plant a dozen hundred others
spring up and birth
their inner leaves
before the trees have greened.
This emerald extravagance
beneath bare trunks and spindly branches
a marching band of green
in scattered rank and file
proclaims that spring
has taken root
despite the frequent rain and chill.

My first writing of this season--as cheap and gaudy as skunk cabbage, perhaps--but hey, something's poking up through the compost.