Wild ginger, pressed between leaves
my mother's Joy of Cooking.
Snatches of Bitterroot, tangled in student comments
from a waylaid semester.
Lead Plant still pungent when I rub
among fading sheaves of committee notes.
A twig of Boneset for colleagues' minor frays.
Shavings of Red Willow, blood of Winnebojo
friend, trickster, gift giver
sacred kinnikinnik
from the land where the people walk
“as long as the rivers run,
as long as the grass grows...”
Fragile Blue Stem
remedy
from all the jangle and jargon--
too many senior moments.
Between evansecent pages
the cosmology of living things
as petals and pages
all turn to Shooting Stars.
Poem by Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes
Professor emerita from UWI system, former librarian in a northwoods log cabin library, Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes poetry has been published in four countries, with recent work translated into Chinese. Her recent work appears in The Awakenings Review, Moss Piglet, Dos Gatos Press, Rosebud, Poetry Hall, and many others. Her new chapbook is "When Wilding Returns," published by Cyberwit Press. She lives with her husband, restoring prairie, and trekking in the pines.
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