Skunk Cabbage

And now as the iron rinds over,

the ponds start dissolving,

you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers 

and new leaves unfolding

upon the brash

turnip-hearted skunk cabbage

slinging its bunches leaves up

through the chilling mud.

You kneel beside it. The smell

is lurid and flows out in the most

unabashed way, attracting 

into itself a continual spattering

of protein. Appalling its rough

green caves, and the thought

of the thick root nested below, stubborn

and powerful as instinct!

But these are the woods you love,

where the secret name

of every death is life again - a miracle

wrought surely not of mere turning

but of dense and scalding reenactment. Not

tenderness, not longing, but daring and brawn

pull down the frozen waterfall, the past.

Ferns, leaves, flowers, the last subtle

refinements, elegant and easeful, wait

to rise and flourish.

What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.

~ Mary Oliver