Recently published in the New York Review of Books:

Urticophilia

Oh let me wake where nettles are growing

in the cool first light of a spring morning

the young leaves shining after a night’s rain

a green radiance glistening through them

as their roots rise into their day’s color

a hue of sunlight out of the black earth

they made of their lives in the underworld

touching the darkness of their whole story

from which their leaves open to the morning

into a world they know and a season

they inherit let me wake where nettles

were always familiar and come and go

in the conversation their growth this year

compared with other years in the same places

the way they sting if barely brushed but not

if grasped firmly without hesitation

the best recipe for nettle soup with

new potatoes oh let the world’s sense

come to me from the spring leaves of nettles

my true elders and not from the voices

with something to sell nor from the spreading

scar tissue of pavement numbing the flayed earth

not from the last words of the fast talkers

to whom the nettle leaves never listen

–published in the October 13, 2011 issue of the New York Review of Books