Anyway, you will probably notice right away in looking at the title of the poem that it is called Old #5. That is because this is the fifth version of the poem that I remember. Obviously, I have a strange fascination with this most beautiful of flowers that is also a wretched weed that ruins fields with its ability to spread quickly and to survive most attempts to weed it out. I wrote the first version of this poem, which I will place below the new one, back when I was helping Carroll Hicklin on his farm. We had just spent a whole day spraying, chopping, and digging up purple thistles in one of his hay fields. We did successfully stop the spread of the thistles at that time, but I remember early that morning as the dew had glistened in the sunlight on the purple flowers and hairy stems how gorgeous these horrible weeds were. I recall going home, taking a shower, and writing the poem in about five minutes or less. I guess that I thought about it all day.
The two pictures accompanying this blog were taken by Kellie and me in our contest of who can take the best picture. I am not going to tell you who took which one. Email me and let me know which one you like best. Enjoy!
The Purple Thistle
(Old #5)
In the rustling breath of harvest twilight,
The purple thistle spreads its frosty leaves,
Grasping wisps of eastern silver sky light
And evanescent nips of Autumn eves
Yet does not yield to peaceful sleep too soon
In the soothing aura of mother moon.
Held fast in fertile soil with heavy sigh,
Tall grasses wag their lush seeds in the wind
Strewing for migrant birds a food supply
And tickling drowsy cows upon the chin
While twisting supple torsos to a tune
Pronounced in silence by the rising moon.
Black-eyed Susan blooms bump Queen Anne’s fine lace
Smearing sinless white licentious yellow.
A green grasshopper springs in empty space;
A sleek barn swallow stabs the poor fellow
And skitters to his nest with scratch-legged boon,
His sickle shadow on the bald-faced moon.
The thistle whispers in its zealous sleep
A savior’s myth that whips through fervent dreams.
Bedecked in thorns and swathed in purple deep,
The thistle knows no suffering nor seems,
Its faith a tricky hieroglyph or rune
Translated by old lovers of the moon.
Now, both horizons blush a wounded red,
But neither orb bobs in a brightening sky.
The sleepy thistle rises from the dead
Or from a dream in which it cannot die.
The moon is gone; the sun razes the gray.
A farmer with a spray tank walks that way.
Assured it has no rot or leaf disease,
The flower flaunts its health and beams with pride.
The man believes it’s just a weed he sees
And cures the nuisance with an herbicide.
From a brass nozzle, poison mists whistle
Crusting and killing the guiltless thistle.
Slender tan grasses bend in passive bows.
Tired winds weave lazy circles to nestle
Near the bristly noses of blissful cows
In a reformed field without one thistle.
They murmur and warble as if to croon
But sing no excuse to the chary moon.
Here is the earliest version that I can find of the poem The Purple Thistle. I do not see a date on it, but I started working with Carroll around 1996 or so. Therefore, I would place it between 1996 and 2000.
The Purple Thistle
In the rusty breath of dusty summer twilight,
The purple thistle spreads frosty leaves
To the glistering twists of faltering light
And yields not to the sleepy peace
of the sordid moon.
Bowing pregnantly in this heavy sigh,
Lesbidisia and Fescue acknowledge royalty
And vainly supply the ground with grain
(Whiskers tickle the lazy cow's chin.)
While bending slender torsos to the music
Of a holy war.
Black-eyed Susan bumps Queen Anne's lace
And the industrious mouse chews at the bitterness
Of the skunk flavored chokeweed, yellow
And green in its courageous cowardice.
A fat black grasshopper leaps and is stabbed
In the beak of a whispering barnswallow.
The thistle quivers with anticipation
As myths of a savior whip through dream's stages,
Decked in purple, crowned with thorns
Radiant in the depths of divine sacrifice.
(A lone man approaches with a yellow tank on his back.)
The faith is unwavering in tricky
Early moonlight.
Cattails reflect in the shimmering smoothness
Of the violet sky in the frog-infested pond.
The purple thistle is without a mirror image
And lives on what it sees in dreams.
(But the man thinks he knows what he sees.)
Decked in purple, crowned with thorns,
Radiant in the depths of divine sacrifice,
And confident in its lack of disease,
The thistle stands still in the dusty breeze.
In the black hose, poison mist whistles
And fogs the thistle from a blunt brass nozzle.
The grass withers in fairy circles.
Tomorrow's sun will toast frosty thorns
And the Savior's myth will not be reborn.
The grass waves in golden brown rows
And tender shoots green the nose of grazing cows.
The wind draws circles as though to nestle
In this fertile field without one thistle
And no more will it purr and whistle
Across frosty thorns and purple crowns
In the rusty breath
Of the dusty summer twilight.
Please make sure and let me know which you like the best, and, if you can express why, let me know that too.
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