Ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) by Bob Embleton, England, via Wikimedia Commons. “On the grass verge on May Day. Also known as fighters, soldiers, hard-heads (as they can be used in a game similar to conkers), fire-weed and fire leaf.”
I was so happy to “meet” dian this last week. We’re birds of a feather, interested in literature . . . and eating weeds! Ha!
— S. K.
Ode to the plantain weed
a Brobdingnagian broad leaf
plantain
a circular universe
this round leafed plant
low circles of leaves,
low-growing pressed
close squatting real low
with flower stalks 12-18 inches tall
spike shells like firing silver bullets
cone-shaped bloom
bending its stem tight
arrow heads fly
You are your own macrocosmos
an intercontinental ballistic missile
control facility center
with medicinal properties with edible leaves and seeds
appreciated from far back
Anglo-Saxons remedies for scapes, wounds, burns, sores
bites and bee-bug stings.
a wide rosette spread
a common weed with wide, oval leaves
by Roman armies
on conquests
You, so remembered as the white man’s
perennial foot print
— dian parrotta
“Ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata), Essex, England” by sannse, via Wikimedia Commons
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Dian is a proud alumnus from the State University of New York’s Stony Brook University which had taken her for the first time away from Brooklyn. She also holds an M.A.T degree from George Mason University and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Lindenwood University. She enjoys writing about the health benefits of eating delicious dandelions, broad-leaf plantain, purslane, garlic mustard, common nettle and the very tasty pigweed. She harvests words into odes that celebrate the common plants, trees, shrubs and roots. She does dream to retire from teaching after 30 years at a local high school within the next year or so to join her two sons, who are both living in Prague and in Madrid, Spain. She says she wouldn’t mind spending her retirement writing garden, flower and plant poems.
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