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Science of Mind
Fall 2007   Vol. 24 #1
Fall 2007   Vol. 24 #1

Poems/Not Poems | Poetry Saves: War & Peace Poems

Weed and Star / Drink of This

By Clare Morris

 
 

Weed and Star

A man bends toward the edge

of a new-mown lawn, his beard

bright white beneath a lowered straw hat.

Slowly, surgically, he trowels weed

after weed from its city park moorings.

 

Sometimes he holds a particular grass

to the afternoon sun, admiring the nimbus

around delicate fronds and seed pouches.

Then he lays it down among other fallen kin

in a burlap bag at his feet.

 

My grandmother picked burrs from our

sweaters when I was a child.

She’d lift them to the light, pull them apart,

examine their design, say, as if for the first time,

“Every seed a work of art.”

She did the same with stars, touching each one,

pulling it down for a moment from its garden

of constellations, her eyes bright with their shine.

 

Drink of This

Near the poison plant

grows the healing herb.

Their roots braid

in my ground.

I will make a brew of them,

pour it in a cup.

It will tell me

on my tongue

the taste of how I love,

how I kill.

 

 

 

From the Fall 2007 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 24, No. 1)
© 2007 Clare Morris

Author

Clare Morris is a member of Maxine Hong Kingston's Veterans Writing Group and is a contributor to Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (Koa Books, 2006). She is a veteran of the peace movement, in which she has been involved since the late 1960s. She is currently a psychotherapist in private practice and a leader of seminars with the Guild for Psychological Studies in San Francisco. Clare Morris has written two books of poetry, published by the Angela Center Press, In Transit: Love Poems to the City and Child of the Longest Night.

Author

Clare Morris is a member of Maxine Hong Kingston's Veterans Writing Group and is a contributor to Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (Koa Books, 2006). She is a veteran of the peace movement, in which she has been involved since the late 1960s. She is currently a psychotherapist in private practice and a leader of seminars with the Guild for Psychological Studies in San Francisco. Clare Morris has written two books of poetry, published by the Angela Center Press, In Transit: Love Poems to the City and Child of the Longest Night.

 
 
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