David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

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.

Listening Point

Everyone needs a listening point.  Everyone needs a place where they can be wholly within themselves and both contemplate the grand mysteries of the universe and mundane conundrums of daily existence.  The term “listening point” was coined in the title of naturalist Sigurd Olson’s 1958 book that is a paean to his special place, a bare glaciated spit of rock at the water’s edge in northern Minnesota.  Each time he went there it “opened great realms of thought and interest” where he saw “the immensity of space and glimpsed at times the grandeur of creation.”  He christened his spot “listening point” because “only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard.”

Slice of Pie, Slice of Life

I haven’t had a cake on my birthday in a couple of decades.  It’s not that I abhor getting older (inasmuch as the alternative is unattractive), or that I am a Scrooge about celebrations.  The fact is that while cake may tantalize my sweet tooth and fill my stomach, pie alone satisfies my soul.  As the annual tally of years grows each April, I increasingly find that only a pie befits the day, lit candles and all.  I typically wouldn’t obtrude such a quirk of personal taste upon other people, except that this seems to be a season of high interest in pies generally.