Still Life with Nettles and Far-Away Seas
Creamed stinging nettles sound less than appetizing
though the chef at this smug riverside eatery assures
the stingers have been neutralized by boiling and are
tasty enough when gussied up with milk and thyme
and panko, a pinch of nutmeg, paprika, and many
cloves of garlic from the tidy obedient garden. The nettles,
which begin to seem irrelevant beneath the lavish sauce,
were picked from the banks at dawn when a lilac mist
crooned promise of salubrious springtime lit with requisite
birdsong – possibly a swallow sundering glints in the ripples
as it flicks dragonflies and midges from the salutary breeze.
I have no beef with locavores peddling seasonal restoratives
by a river cleared of human toxins and debris, though a rancid
tide of plastics and sargassum is bulging in the southern seas,
churning deadly microbes toward the paddlers near the coast
a thousand miles from where I toast such picturesque good
fortune with my bracing farm-fresh pear-infused iced tea spiked
with an unironic grin of home-made gin. There is no poison that
I know of in this charming tonic air, no fathers’ sins returning
to oblivious spade-and-bucket-shores. Stillness seems a whimsy,
made by tricksy fairy folk for witless passersby. I eat my
nettles willingly, anticipating hidden stings.
KATE FALVEY is the author of a full-length collection, The Language of Little Girls (David Robert Books); and two chapbooks, What the Sea Washes Up (Dancing Girl Press) and Morning Constitutional in Sunhat and Bolero (Green Fuse Poetic Arts). Read more.