oxalis – The Kingdom of Enough

Resistance

I slip my spade through the weedy tangle

and slice into the earth,

dig as deep as the blade will go

to come up under the root mass,

and tug an entire oxalis from soil

where lilies and echevaria want to grow.

Sometimes the garden yields its invader,

bulbs clinging to white tendrils

as I pull them gently from the dirt,

then toss them

without ceremony or remorse

into my bucket.

But mostly the roots go deep,

and bulbs remain

nestled in their secret places,

sucking sunlight and water

meant for the bird of paradise.

In this little square of earth

under my neighbor’s redwood,

I want to be the American army liberating Paris,

but I am only one humble partisan,

and this looks to be a long battle.

Each Dawn a Surprise

From the dark place despair dropped me

may I rise up like oxalis

after the first autumn rain,

push through

wildfire ashes and

soaked cedar bark mulch

into this enticing

day-following-night world.

Let me sip sunlight

and feast on my own green,

unfold cloverleaves as if

the sun would return

tomorrow

and tomorrow

and tomorrow.

All winter long

buried,

I dream of rising up,

of becoming flowers

so yellow I am

joined to that light.

On the Eve of Spring in a Time of Plague

It’s true, the hush that has fallen over the world is wrought of disease and splintered by anguish, but with no competition from cars, the neighborhood birds take extravagant delight in their morning song, and the oxalis says thank you to the sun and late winter rain with a carpet of yellow blossoms.

Already vowed through their roots to this particular plot of earth, the roses and the redwood continue to shelter in place with equanimity, while the squirrels show flagrant disregard for the order of the public health officer, racing along their private highline. Of this I am privileged to know a small segment – the piece that runs along our roof, five feet through the air to the tips of the privet, through its leafy thicket, and onto a limb of the redwood, possibly with a quick game of chase around its trunk, before disappearing into the neighbor’s backyard.

Our neighborhood acrobat

Each day the persimmon tree takes another step in her dance with the seasons. The crone who presided through the winter now wreathes her bare limbs with maiden leaves and drinks her fill of sunlight and the mycorrhizal ambrosia twined round her roots, already dreaming of the bees she will seduce – but not yet of the luscious fruit she will birth. Those golden orbs, a feast for humans, squirrels, and crows, are seasons away in an uncertain future.

In this time of plague we knit our hearts to the sorrow and fear that now unite us, but let us join too with the humble psalm of the oxalis. Thank you for the rain, the sun, this greening. Thank you.