This early morning as Kellie and I walked at the Fulton County fairgrounds and Salem city park, we happened upon a purple thistle bush with two blooms. I have blogged before about my confused and contradictory feelings about this beautiful but obstinately stubborn invasive weed. It can destroy hayfields, which are very important to local farmers and the local economy. I myself spent many days out on Carroll Hicklin's farm in the hot summer sun both spraying and digging up these thorny, flashy flowers. I don't miss those days, and I am glad that the purple thistles that Kellie took these pictures of are not in my yard, and, hopefully, will never be a problem for me. (The picture at the bottom is one that I posted last year.)
Anyway, the pictures reminded me that I had made a promise to my blog readers at some point that I would find all the versions of The Purple Thistle that I have written. Sadly, I think that at least three of those versions must be hand written because I can only find the original version, published in The Purple and Blue Collection, a fragment version that I never did anything with until today, and the #5 version, which will be published in Atheists and Empty Spaces. I have put them all together here for you below the second of Kellie's pictures from this morning. Enjoy!
Purple Thistles
The Purple Thistle
(First version I can find)
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,
Lespedeza 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 whithers 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.
The Purple Thistle
In summer twilight’s golden dust,
The purple thistles proudly thrust
Their faces at the final faltering light.
Without a sigh, a moan, or peep,
They droop into a dream-filled sleep.
Each thistle shakes in breezeless air,
Decked in purple, crowned in thorns,
Dreaming dreams messiahs dare
As though the myth itself adorns
The worthless weed with faithful flair.
A man who knows naught of delusion
Approaches the dreamers without confusion,
And from his black tank, a poison mist whistles
Coating and killing the myth-dreaming thistles
In the sleeping peace of a common illusion.
The green fades to brown in the sun-drenched field
Made free of the blight of the purple thistle.
The wind draws circles as if to nestle
Beneath the moon’s broad beaming shield
In the soft warmth of quivering grass.
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.
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