THE PLANT

I thought it a non-flowering plant,
the kind you find at the dentist's under
a plaque of receding gums: it has
dusty oblong leaves and a woody, stripy
stem—I've had it, oh, for years
in my study, forget sometimes to water it
yet it lives. But just last night
the room gave off a scent so puissant,
so lushly-sweet I thought it a dead mouse
or my son smoking pot but no, it was

the plant in blossom—a single shoot with
six spiky pinkish-white blooms
and globules of gummy juice between as if
it would suck me up if I tried to pick it!
By morning the scent was gone.
I turned to my old keep.
But then at dusk it filled the whole house
as though I'd been plunged in
a jungle jammed with Easter lilies. I
stood there amazed. Was I dreaming? No,
I could feel the pinch, I was inching up

through boulders, sedge and bristle,
skin thickening, hair sticky with rain—
and the most incredible thing:
my head suddenly split into milky buds
like a dozen plaited snakes!
I yawned in the dark like a cat unwinding
out of its daytime nap, rubbing and rubbing
and rubbing its bulk against the moon,
embedding its smell in the clouds,
in the clay—razing the night.

by Nancy Means Wright                   

Published in Comstock Review

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