* poetry by G. C. Waldrep, excerpted from MQR 53:2, Spring 2014 *
I came to love late,
as in a forest clearing
one walks at dusk
& spies, in the
needlemass, that
pale clump, un-
suspected, not there
just a few hours
before: indian pipe,
corpse-plant
that draws its life
from the roots
of others by way
of a third organism
largely unseen.
It is not at all clear
what the indian
pipe offers
either of its hosts:
the fungus
from which its roots
draw, or the pine
on which the fungus
feeds. Its flowers
flecked with
pink unfurl
to the vertical
& then, in a night,
the whole blackens
like a discarded
matchstick,
We were never
here. I search
the needle-lift for
their ghost-
presence. It is not
like night, a poet
wrote, of blindness.
They do not
transplant easily
& are even harder
to raise from
seed (from the dead
I almost wrote);
no one
is completely sure
how they pollinate.
It’s best, one website
suggests, that
if you want them,
you recreate
the conditions under
which they’re
most likely to thrive.
Indian pipe,
I would touch you
but you bruise easily
& darken
like a cut apple.
This is your season,
late summer in
the northern woods.
Let me glimpse
your incandescence
roadside, as if
some god
had dropped you
in rushed
or careless passage.
You are an old
friend. I will wait
patiently,
as long as it takes
for winter to sweep
this forest
clean of green, &
then I’ll dig beneath
you for my heart.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
