Work in Progress: Verbesina Occidentalis

I'm working on a wonderful project sponsored in part by the Professional Art Quilter's Alliance - South called "Narrative Threads." The exhibit will open later this spring at the Page-Walker Arts and History Center in Cary, North Carolina.

Verbisina Occidentalis by Lyric Kinard

Each artist in the group has been paired with a writer and set free to work on a collaborative work. The lovely and talented poet, Maura High, is my partner and I couldn't have asked for a better person to work with. We've connected well and are working on a sort of "call and response" series. I respond to her poem with art - she responds to that work with another poem - and so on.

Verbisina Occidentalis by Lyric Kinard

I chose a poem of hers that seemed to grab me on a visceral level - and that brought such immediate visuals to my mind that I couldn't shake it. I didn't intend to be so literal with the piece but, well, there you go. Hmmm. It's rather odd - but in looking at all the pictures I like this one best. A simple sketch with needle and thread.

Verbisina Occidentalis by Lyric Kinard

Verbisina Occidentalis by Lyric Kinard

Verbisina Occidentalis by Lyric Kinard

Verbisina Occidentalis by Lyric Kinard

VERBESINA OCCIDENTALIS

Dark does not fall: it rises from the soil, 

seeping along the flattened grass 

of the dim path and flowing 

up trees already black, 

night’s conduits, forked

darkening against the retreating light,

while below them in the field the crownbeard 

on its winged stem makes a last effort, 

waggling its two or three 

yellow rays, lifting 

its small cluster of disc petals

in imitation of the sun—though

its leaves have gone quiet already, 

and the pollinators sleep their insect sleep.

*

Sleep is just a way to talk about what happens 

in the dark, what the cells do, what 

color green is, when no light shines on it.

The crownbeard holds still now, nothing moves

under the streetlights in the ramifying subdivisions.

Wings close, and petals. Eyes 

see nothing that is not inward and radical. 

There are boundaries, such as where stem

becomes root, and where the taproot probes 

among stones, and we may travel them, 

through capillaries and waterways and geographies 

of decomposition. Underground is like aboveground

inverted, a reflection of sorts, uncertain

and hopeful as seedheads at seedtime.

*

Seedtime is the wind, and seeds 

quiver in their bracts, as brittle 

as moths are, and as dry, as poised, 

as these winged stems, which still lean 

to the light. One good shake 

and they scatter down the grasses 

and lodge: while the rains come, and long hours 

of dark and cold, while they parse 

moonlight and sunlight, and know already 

that the root comes first and follows water

down the kingdoms of soil, then a tendril 

and the precursors of leaves, leaf, branch and crown.

I hold some in my palm: each husk ribbed and shaped

like a vase, like the word promise in their language.

*

In their language, grow is a conversation among cells,

why, thank you, here’s the sun! you go first, 

yes, you, I this way and in this green vein

upward, and here’s sap, sweet and mineral . . .

Like banners held to our view

by attending angels, their pronouncements

unfurl and flutter through the daylight, 

and all night they hum. The point being seed

and more seed, up there where their lures dangle;

a few long, bright yellow petals, no need 

for more when bees enough roam the flowerets,

when even one person has leaned closer, as if to listen

and instead been sounded, like a drum

struck and reverberating through the field and further.

*

And further afield, along trails 

mapping the wood, waysides, and how many lives

did I pass through and never know its name? 

By hearsay and looking, in a book, I found 

a paradise of leaves, opposite and ovate,

that curious “tissue decurrent on the stem,”

the loose corymbs, taxonomies of desire 

in a right name, a promise 

of knowledge and belonging, as in “my flower,” 

“my field,” and so on, until “our flower,”

our dominion. That much was in my gift—a sprig, 

it’s true. While the flowers, which know all about 

belonging, heeded the imperatives of light and wind, 

water calling to them: Verbesina, little word.  

*

Word, made dicotyledon and vascular, 

one-stemmed perennial aster, of the family 

Asteraceae: not so much star as a constellation

of particulars, a coming-together that was years

in the making. I saw crownbeard growing, 

yellow crownbeard, Southern crownbeard, 

here, in an old field reverting to wood.

Birds fidgeted in the stands. Deer 

crashed through the stiff, ribbed stems 

and left them bruised and flattened. People

and their dogs passed through, Linnaeus 

and his descendants were among the familiars.

We left traces in the air, on the grass

and track, a faint phosphorescence in the dark.

© Maura High

Nov 2011–Jan 2012