Carlene Kucharczyk

The “seed” of this poem (ha) was a prompt in a poetry workshop. I don’t remember what the particular prompt was now—I remember there was some sort of metrical constraint and rhyme scheme, but there was something beyond that as well. I found my topic for the poem when I encountered and became entranced by moonvine (or moonflower) at a farmers market in North Carolina. I wanted to learn more about this intriguing night-blooming flower, and I enjoyed entering into an imaginative space with it and language-play. I don’t know that research is always associated with writing poems, but this one required that of me, as some do. I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about this plant. Writing poems like this is aspirational for me. I find it odd that most of us walk around not knowing the names of the plants, flowers, trees, and creatures we encounter—and can go a lifetime this way—so I’m always happy to learn another name and am appreciative when someone can teach me. While often I feel discouraged that this should be so out of the path of a normal life or countercultural, I think of how many more names of birds and so forth I know now than I did just a few years ago, and am encouraged. This also depends somewhat on where one lives. I grew up in the suburbs, though spending significant time in rural New Hampshire too, and lived in cities, before moving to Vermont seven years ago. Vermont feels conducive to this sort of learning and attention-paying. I love that poetry can bring me outward—to what I would not have encountered otherwise—that it sends me forth, on a new path, that I was certainly not on before. And that it allows for opportunities to engage more with the natural world—that we are not separate from, but very much a part of. I was happy for the poem to find a place in my first collection, Strange Hymn, that came out this spring, and that it fit with other poems in the collection that have a fairytale-like quality to them. I just recently bought moonflower seeds. They’re sitting on my windowsill in a vial with a lovely midnight blue seal, waiting in possibility.