Lisa Wujnovich

Bio: Lisa Wujnovich is a poet and an organic vegetable farmer at Mountain Dell Farm in Hancock, NY. She has two published poetry chapbooks, Fieldwork, Finishing Line Press, and This Place Called Us, a collaboration with photos by Mark Dunau, Stockport Flats Press. Lisa’s poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, including one she co-edited: The Lake Rises, poems to and for our bodies of water, Stockport Flats Press. Her anti-fracking poetry appeared on the forefront of the anti-fracking movement in New York State. She holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University.

I will not kill today

not one blade of grass
will I pull from this parched bed
of chaste lavender, dwarfed
at the foot of amaranth.
Not even cleaver’s sticky embrace
with bitter wormwood or pokewood
overshadowing black cohosh will I disturb.

This heathen Sabbath I break from
mindless severing hands—
rest seedlings, shoots, deep-rooted
dock and plantain gone to chaff.
I embrace dried whirls among fresh blooms,
memorize hummingbird’s dipped sip.

Ignore my soiled fingers’ itch to yank
tongues licking between lady mantle’s gentle leaves.
See how easily I bypass hairy-throated nettle,
to wave to my old friend saint johnswort?

Calm this rub to kill, whisper to check
valerian’s unabashed gaiety
and mosquito’s insistent hunger.
No—no—avoid the wrinkled, budded wild lettuce
and prickled thistle, scatter-rooted.
Shut out the uninvited in monarda’s scarlet display,
tiptoe past green crowds in meadowsweet’s pink.

Today I declare this day guiltless.
I will not frighten even a tiny snail
asleep beneath echinacea umbrellas. Relax slugs,
I will not crush your stomach bodies
on my way to clary sage’s pluming scent.
No, I will not kill today. I will breathe in,
rest—and breeze—and breathe out.

Dandelions for Dinner

Spring won’t choose the music,
shuffles between mud and dirt.
I am left-footed, mattock swinging,
digging a ditch for the always soggy
spillover and gutter flow.
Edging with rocks, I am
again learning about boundaries;
taken aback by the feral cat walking
right into the barn, past me and my cooing.
Beyond in the abandoned
garden, cracks sprout between stone,
teasel spiked, mugwort crazy.
On the bank, open doll-sized daffodils
cup robin song.
I cannot bear to clip even one,
sliding back down the ridge.

On break from sowing, I am unscheduled,
uncensored from indentations—countless
seeds and regrets slipped wasteful
through my fingers.

A respite wanderer in wild meadow,
I am vowing diligence, starting over,
digging in wholesome, germ-filled earth.
Whole roots let go. Saw-toothed leaves,
disheveled, flung into my bucket,
intone some green tongue
to my high-pitched refrain:
wash, wash, what is to become of us?
wash, wash, what is to become of us?

Mist

Driving early for
senior grocery shopping,
white mist foams hemlocks.

Sacred vapor—all
our breath, spirit mingling.
River newly thawed.

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