not being taught the names of natal trees; not knowing to sip the scent of flowering plant relations; I fell in with the sweet rot of leaves at rest and mingling; that I might quietly die back; (a nation’s offerings laying claim to my dying) I press a thumb into creek mud to dissipate involuntary knowledge beyond the scrim of water seeking (other animal footprints changing form) one paw rubs the straight lines off a map till the palimpsest reappears the other paws muddy my inherited contract, each step following others’ steps to the edge of its undoing, where native plants grow freely out of this place and its claims rhizomes send out nutriment and pulse into full flower cups of five petals light to deep pink, solitary at the ends of branches gathered on thickety shrubs with small straight thorns, egg-shaped leaves and autumn hips hairy, fleshy, reddish purple the botanists renamed you Rosa nutkana and observed in detail your life cycle with no mention of how to live in the mythic where humans changing into other beings may escape instituted failures
From: Vol.09 N.01 – A Poetics of Rights
With Táamsas
by
Linda Russo