Wendy Taylor Carlisle

 We now know, trees can liaise in a forest, and even yellow slime mold communicates, but in my scant Ozark soil, where is the delicious language of carrots? “You can’t grow root crops in these mountains,”  said one neighbor to our extended family of hungry musicians. I worried about the loss of potential Yukons and fingerlings. What else might fail to thrive in this problem ground? And how might a potato or a carrot feel about my lack of expertise in the cultivation of root crops? That I don’t read gardening books? That I’m not tenacious? That I don’t know anything about mulch? What did the unplanted need? Verlyn Klinkenborg writes, “The price we often pay for consciousness is inattention.” Am I so surrounded by bits and bytes, that I’m oblivious to vegetable signals? Perhaps I imagine the carrot into woody indifference, while all along it simply can’t announce its preference for deep loam, its delight in sun and rain on its umbellets. My poem “Umbel,” in Plant-Human Quarterly, pays attention.