A Parable of Tares
Submerged in a roadside pocket of vine and forb
packed tight so as to suckle the sun’s every quantum,
trained eyes peel for the ordinary foliage
so characteristic of Georgia asters,
vanishing blooms once borne via consistent
demolition: fire or grazing: now thriving only
where mowers come to tame such unassuming prairies
for at least another year.
Lately on this land
our burns have flared the balance in the aster’s favor,
disturbing earth with something stronger than spinning blades,
though the past hundred years marked by upset’s absence
have allowed unwanted verdure to settle
all the soil’s vacancies, with a weed in every nook.
Through them the ground is strong, and I would take a weed,
tireless vagrant, over any rare and beautiful
remnant of that steady world which existed before
we all began the long march home to stone and heat,
although I wish for purple blossoms back on the hills
as much as any steward.
And on this day,
tucked in a thicket while cars roll by, I ponder
how far seed drifts, or a man, or precious wild life
from the romantic ideal. And I recall
Christ and his unwanted or Chapman and his
dreadful herb dogfennel, which he spread alongside
infamous apple trees thinking it beneficial to health,
able to heal inflictions with the subtle
magic of early medicine. And I surmise
the saint of weeds might yet be a saint for the world.
What lives among the living is all there is.
Pickens County, South Carolina
Dogfennel
Eupatorium capillifolium (Lam.) Small
I walk this utility path some afternoons
smelling its muddy stink, sinking down in its thick
municipal shit, logging the day’s affairs.
Rats hunt for skin by the stale river; rusty bridges
clang with moving men; overpasses billow
full of exhaust. Plastic bags float in gusty spirals
from the road to the water, drifting homeward
useless, settling in a sycamore’s shadow
atop amber waves of dogfennel: withered, musty,
little value for wildlife or livestock, considered
noxious, a pest plant. Its alkaloids keep bugs away;
crush a handful of its dill-leaves, rub on arms and neck.
This month a good summer’s crop stands dead and honest
while other beings are beat by the bounds of the yard,
cultivated to glossy polymer perfection,
manufactured to be adored: engorged petals,
sterile bracts, flat cones: Rudbeckia, Hydrangea,
Echinacea, the whole lot reduced to ornament.
Not dogfennel, its leaves dissected into pungent
feathers, their odor drifting through beckoning pastures
on hot evenings. It grows only with unbred auxins,
cytokinins, hormones forcing cells to multiply,
build, and rip with savage passion. It crowds the roadsides,
the rail-lines and abandoned lots, planting the plowed world.
I know no wild but this maintenance line. Every year
city workers lug out their war-chests hoping to keep
vile seeding in check, but the new stems march on,
disdainful toward beauty, aloof to oil and muck.
They take comfort in their fated germination,
waiting to flower, fester, and thrive again, to fill
their limbs with hot sun, their veins with scum, their lungs with wind
kicked up by howling trains pushing on into night!
Clarke County, Georgia
Carson Colenbaugh is a poet and forest ecologist from Kennesaw, Georgia. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Ecological work of his has been featured in Human Ecology. He is a 2024 Tor House Foundation Fellow and can be found on Instagram @carsoncolenbaugh.
Header photo of Georgia asters by GarudaSon, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Carson Colenbaugh by Sara Ann White.
