day 13 - bog

 well, i kind of worked toward yesterday's prompt, then i forgot to finish posting it here. oops..

 that said, this was fun, even if it feels unfinished. what i learned from the day 9 fiasco is that "finished" isn't really the point; the point is whether i like it enough to (share and) move on. (o, vanity!) that's def where this one lands: it doesn't feel quite done but i think it's nice enough for roughly an hour's work, and i'm ok posting it too (as a vain bonus!). it doesn't feel quite poetic, i guess, but it's pretty enough and fun, right? right?? 

 oh well, enjoy! 

day 13 - bog days

by tophie palmer
#napowrimo, Apr 13

i don’t remember often, but i do recall a bog.

it reshaped my young life unimaginably the summer before high school

i recall the day with my father, a boat, and a bridge that blocked our way

i recall us having to pull the canoe out

and carry it across to the other side

i recall being at the back as he pulled it on our way back

i recall nothing about our conversation

but i do recall looking around and spotting to my right

the little stump in the water

and i recall the moss on it, the little grasses 

and i recall its loneliness, its inevitability, its charm 

and i recall most especially the curious little plants on it 

——the round-leafed sundews——

i’d read about them when i was younger

but i never expected to see one in the wild

looking so happy and demure, sparkling in the sun so freely

i collected one of the plants (i didn’t know any better then)

cradled it on the way back to our lakehouse

 

the recollections get fuzzier and more sprawling from there

somehow i ended up with a book about these strange plants

that bible and the little plant (which didn’t survive) changed my life

reader, i was obsessed

i joined the horticulture club my freshman year, coerced friends to join, too

the fond memories cultivated in that greenhouse have mostly faded, too, but defined my high school years,

their impressions lingering and cheering on

i learned everything i could about plants and cultivation

(rarely able to keep the tricky carnivores going, but i sure tried)

i wrote plant-based columns for the school newspaper

i did everything my young hands could

 

i still keep plants around these days, a fair few even

even some carnivores that tug along with the rest 

but the obsession waned with age, naturally enough

all things wane or change or fade or shift about, in time, with age

but i still recall the bog—bright sun, black-peat muds, green moss

——and my little heart bursting, my fresh excitement boiling over

and tho i don’t find the sundews there anymore

that memory lives on; it hasn’t waned on me yet

 

photo by Alan Rockefeller - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0