---
title: Litany for plants
genre: verse

project:
    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
    css: autocento
...

I need a plant.  I need a thing \
to take care of.  I need \
a little green brownspotted \
blackdirt growing \
quietness.  I need a sunlit \
dawn knowing my name filtered \
through a thin green window. \
I need chlorophyll \
working its magic on beams of \
grassmade early morning dewdrop \
sweetmaking green.  I need \
the dark earth sucking water \
from a black crevice \
its black magic churning \
wormilled rockturned starblind \
darkness and cold into \
the opposite of dust.  I need the heat \
to blind me.  I need the dumb making \
to charge my coldened blood.  I need \
the dropturned leaves to turn again \
their faces to the windblown sun. \
I need millions of tiny years \
summed up and burning out some unknown \
new growth into the air.  I need four \
hundred feet of dark red gnarled wood \
and needles glistening wetly on goldheaded \
branches hoisting themselves \
to the sky.  I need ten strong men \
to fail to bring you down.  Old one \
I need the peace that comes with knowing \
something sacred holds still \
in the world.  I need your green tongues \
of flame to lick at old wounds \
stitching us together away from ourselves. \
I need your brownbranching grasp \
to keep me from drifting off \
into unknowing terrible sleep.  I need \
to know the snake hanging \
from your branches.  I need to watch \
the dropping of flesh massful \
onto the ground from a height.  I need \
the gnawer at your root to strike \
a vein to quicken old brown stone \
to movement.  I need jeweleyed venom \
barking new greennesses into the bark. \
I need a knocker of dark secrets hidden \
in the dark bark hiding a smallstone \
smoldering pearl in the knot.  I need \
that pearl held out in a hand like an offering. \
I need the hand to be a plant's hand.

I need a plant.  I need a growing \
growler groaning toward heat and air. \
I need a green thin stem surprisingly strong \
holding up the weight of a plain \
of fallow greennesses of creases and caresses \
of tiny worldmaking hardworking grandeur. \
I need a singer of life crying \
forward into old roads covered over \
by dead trees.  I need the rasping of root \
in dirt.  I need the unfurling of fiddleheads \
to sing forth a new symphony.  I need \
fruits swelling large for the harvest. \
I need yellow light shining through white bark. \
I need juicecrush flowing waterlike \
through valleys percolating up \
through the ground.  I need springs bubbling sap \
into cabins of wood fought for by labor. \
I need snow on the ground with shoots \
dotting the melting patches.  I need two \
leaves on a thin stalk shivering \
in moonlight.  I need robinsong warbling \
over the heads of small seeds sprouting \
to enliven their growth.  I need rings \
of woody material widening to push \
the ground out of their way.  I need \
new greennesses pushing out from \
the brown dark bark gnarled.  I \
need the robin to build its songfilled \
nest in a branchcrotch.  I need \
the fecundity of fungi on the branches. \
I need quiet of the sunlight shooting \
through thousands of branched leaves \
quivering.  I need whisper at dawn. \
I need burrows underground foxholes. \
I need duff layers eaten through \
by worms.  I need brooks murmuring \
through crooks of roots.  I need small \
fish swimming in their schools at \
midnight.  I need oldnesses giving way \
to youngnesses giving way to oldnesses. \
I need dapplegray yellowshot ashbark. \
I need the crunch of dead leaves underfoot. \
I need snowquiet deadbranch mourning. \
I need those purple mountains majesty. \
I need a walk between trees in the dark. \
I need that moment when stopping to rest \
it suddenly seems that all the weary \
forestroads in all their meandering come \
to rest their heads at my astonished \
feet, none of them needing more than me.