Holdfast the Beautiful Changes

Elinor Ann Walker

“Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.” —Richard Wilbur, “The Beautiful Changes”

No mandrake shrieks here. First, I used a pickaxe,
but for the final pull, I pressed my fist into the hole
to get to the root, itself a fist, fibrous, dense, stubborn.
I had it by the hand, its last fine tendril free.

With that yank, dirt flecked my face. I tasted soil.
I scraped the top of my hand on the wire fencing
where rain had rusted it out. No sting, but blood
surfaced slowly as if the scratch were invisible ink

revealing one dash and dot at a time. Roots themselves
have tissue and cells, plants their vascular systems
and structures soaking up water and nutrients.
This root had legs and arms, fingers and filaments,

but I knew even as the tension eased that I hadn’t
gotten it all. I heard the children laughing, sing-song,
their voices drifting down the street, pictured them
arm-in-arm with their friends, or elbows on hips,

taking selfies. I couldn’t make them hear what
I was saying, stripping the dried morning glory vines
from trellises, releasing the holds of dead things
scattering seeds in wind gusts, thistles with their white

wisps like the hair on an old woman’s head, and
the milkweed drifting. The acorns pummeled
the metal bird bath, hammering rat-a-tat, the scratch
on my hand its own small throb in Morse code,

dash-scratches, blood-beads. The ground gave up
a little gasp, a whisper where the root had been.
I couldn’t help but place my finger there to fill
the space as if to hush a mouth, then my knuckle

to the wrist, then my whole arm until I felt the dirt
get colder and collapse, cave in. I swallowed,
breathed loam, tasted pith, grit between tongue
and teeth, stretched radicle to taproot. I could see

leaves falling toward me, a lullaby of yellow,
then slow fade to dark. Early spring, pale shoots
would emerge, tender evidence that I hadn’t pulled
up everything, or something hadn’t let go.

Elinor Ann Walker (she/her) holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, lives near the mountains, and prefers to write outside. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Cherry Tree, Hayden's Ferry Review, Jet Fuel Review, Nimrod, Northwest Review, Pirene's Fountain, Plant-Human Quarterly, Plume, Poet Lore, Shō Poetry Journal, The Shore, The Southern Review, Terrain.org, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She has recently completed a full-length manuscript of poetry and two chapbooks. Find her online at https://elinorannwalker.com.