Bloodroot (poem)

Tempting frost and spring snows, fragile bloodroot
stalks push through still cold soil.  Scalloped leaves
clasp delicate stems like hands shielding them from
a chill.

White-petaled flowers surrounding a golden-orange eye
spread through gardens, grow in thick
patches along streams and in the dark earth of damp
woodlands.  Blossoms blink at the sky, opening with
dawn and closing at dusk.  As the blooms fade,
the bluish-green leaves grow larger, their palms open
to heaven.

Natives painted faces with the bloody root juice,
dyed baskets and clothes and drove away insects.
Drops on sugar cubes quieted the coughs
of colonists.  This reddish sap relieved the warts, sinus
congestion, fungal rashes and infected wounds
of many old-time farmers.  Clustered by a back door
or found in still leafless forests, the sight of these plants
cures any stasis left from the season past and brings
us eagerly to the verge.