Hymn to a River
2024
There is a place along the bank, where the rocks have crumbled just so and there is a gap in the trees that stand firm on all sides, where the sun shines green through the poplar onto a soft cusion of dead leaves and cedar cones.
This is the spot where, when the days grow long and hot and the river dries enough for flat top rocks to blosom like islands all along her length, you can stand in the middle of the river and if you look just right, at just the right time, you can see the faerie king.
She’s there, lounging in her throne, head leant to the side. Clad in a gown of deep green velvet and dandelion, hair like lichen and sap. She smiles as she watches the dancing of tree sprites across the way and listens to the tittering gossip of mermaids, and this is all in my head but there is a real King here and it’s the River herself.
She is long and lithe and wends through the forest at her will, draped on both sides in leaves the green of your best friends laugh and moss the green of listening to an old folk song and hearing it echo deep inside yourself.
Her watery gown is a dark amber gold, and you might think this makes her dirty but walk up to her bank, look straight down, you will see clear through to the mud slicked rocks and twigs that make up her bed.
Look long enough and you might even see some of her courtiers, knightly crawfish that only fight when they must or dancing fish in dresses of flashing silver and black. Shimery bubbles glide over the surface, weaving between the legs of water skimming bugs.
In places she pours and rushes between rocks and over, quicksilver splashing, a crashing dance, her rushing and shushing a laughing and singing as she trip-tumbles down and around, spinning and tossing, spray summersaulting in air and sliding back cheering, spinning whirling speeding and then sometimes she is still.
And slow.
Luxuriating in dappled sun shade sun, her gentle depths a nursury.
Carressing gently rock and exposed tree root.
Guiding bubble sprites in lazy patterns that can not be traced or predicted, and she sighes and settles looking-glass calm, a breath of wind the only rippling memory of motion.
Walking alongside her, sun dried shale warm under my soles tells stories of the earth’s ever presence, constant and solid, too often overlooked.
Stepping into where her current is fastest I feel the river tug and my ankles, urging me forward towards who knows what and where.
Looking down at my feet, her flow makes them strange, flickering and changing and reminding me that I am as ephemeral as the river is here, that around her bend where I can’t see she is a different being, and in a year or a week or a day I will be a different me, and I will be the same me, as sure as I am standing in the same river as the river a mile downstream.
And I feel the sun firey and warm on my shoulders, and I hear the wind whisper secrets in my ear. The earth still and steady beneath me and the waters ever changing around me, and I feel more whole and one here than I do anywhere else.
I would stay a river creature, but I must go back to being human. I walk my way up the middle, against the flow, skipping rock to rock and splashing in where she is shallow and kind. When I am back she and I will be the same and we will be different and beautiful and one.
And just before I turn to leave her behind I see the rippling, glistening, ever-shifting light of sun-on-water reflected onto trunks and the underside of leaves, slow and patternless, shimmeringly beautiful, and the closest I’ll ever come to seeing the face of a god.
Invasive
2024
once upon a time and every single spring, on every street, in every lawn and every garden, Dandelion grows.
she loves the garden. she loves to feed the bees that come and drink her early spring nectar, loves the children whose knees she stains green and gold, loves having wishes made to her fluffy seeds. her roots are deep, her stem grows tall, her leaves spread out wide. this is where she was planted, so this is where she grows, and she is happy.
but Dandilion was never supposed to be here.
she grows alongside Chickweed and Wood Sorrel, Cow Vetch and Butter-And-Eggs. she is so happy to share the garden with them, to have so many friends around her. but only some of them are supposed to be here, only some of them have grown in these gardens forever. and Dandilion is not one of them.
this is supposed to be the land of Bluebells, the land of Asters and False Foxgloves. they should be spreading widely among the Blue-Eyed Grass and Black-Eyed Susan and the Buttercups. but the land of Milkweed and Slender Bush-Clover has become the land of Dandilion.
Dandilion’s ancestors come from across the sea. that is where she should be, among the Snowdrops and Primroses, Lilies-Of-The-Valley and Wood Anenomies. does she long for those flowers she doesn’t know? does she miss the rolling hills and riverbanks that she’s never seen, but where her roots would have grown had she not been planted in the garden?
and does Dandilion see the damage she does? does she see how Aster and Milkweed have been pushed to the edges of the garden, how Juniper Sedge and Lakeside Daisy are harder to find then they should be? Dandilion spreads too quickly, grows too thickly, with too little control. this land was not made for her but she’s adapted to it too well. this is where Hill’s Thistle and Bird’s-Foot Violet should thrive, and instead it is where you find Dandilion.
she has become inescapable, inevitable. you can pull her up or cut her down but she will only come back again. she can’t seem to help herself.
does she regret being here? it is not really her fault, after all. she was brought here so long ago that it’s hard for her to know where she was before. she didn’t decide where her far flung seeds would land, she didn’t pick here to sprout. the dandilions that came before her blew their seeds into the garden, and they’ve all been here so long it’s hard to think of the garden without them.
she must know she’s in the wrong place, that must be why she tries to hard to make life in the garden better. she gives her sweet nectar to the bees, she gives her roots and petals and leaves for food. she stains knees and grants wishes, brightens up todler’s bouquets and brings a sunny sign of warmer weather to come. she provides her small amount of oxygen, does what she can to improve the soil around her and prevent the erosion of the garden. she wants to be a cheerful, good addition to her home, wants to do as much for the land as the land does for her.
but she can’t keep out of places she’s not wanted, and can’t be more than what her nature asks of her. no matter how much she does for those around her, no matter how she tries to care for her garden home, she still isn’t supposed to be here. she still does damage with her presence. does she wonder if the only way to make up for being here in the first place is to leave and go back to the place she came from, the place that is no longer a home she remembers and loves? and would it even matter, when she is only one flower? when there is still Alfalfa and Bedstraw and Bindweed and Chickory and Coltsfoot and Cowslip and Crocus and Daisy and Iris and Knotweed and Ivy and Mullein and Mustard and Forget-Me-Not and Shepard’s Purse and Snapdragon and Tansy and Teasle and Bull Thistle and Toadflax and Birdsfoot Trefoil and Cow Vetch and Butter-And-Eggs? nothing to do, she’s only one flower.
Dandilion wishes that she didn’t do harm with her very presence in her beloved garden. maybe she would feel better if she left, went back across the ocean, even if the affect was minimal, she wouldn’t be somewhere unwanted.
but what is she to do? her roots are too deep, her stem is too tall, her leaves are spread out too wide. she knows this should be the land of Milkweed and Clover, but she has been planted here and she can not leave.
