Praise For The Botanist of Weeds

Forever playful, sharp, and curious,

he’d make an Eden of roadside margins

and sidewalk cracks where we saw only weeds.

We’d bypass chicory and Queen Anne’s Lace,

but he’d bow down among the flowerheads

to root for cinquefoil, coltsfoot, sorrel,

vetch, its trailing stems and bunched blue flowers.

Wherever intrepid greenery grew,

when he found a plant he couldn’t name he’d learn:

tiny buttons of scarlet pimpernel,

the ballooning calyx, white and paper-thin,

of bladder campion, yellow ragwort,

purple loosestrife, mullein. Everywhere he peered,

he named a world and made it bloom for us.