---
title: Litany
genre: verse

dedication: a plant

id: plant
toc: "Litany for a plant"

project:
    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
    class: autocento
...

| I need a plant.  I need a thing
| to take care of.  I need
| a little green brownspotted
| [blackdirt][] growing
| quietness.  I need a sunlit
| dawn knowing my name filtered
| through a [thin green window][].
| I need chlorophyll
| working its [magic][] on beams of
| grassmade early morning dewdrop
| sweetmaking green.  I need
| the dark earth sucking water
| from a black crevice
| its black magic churning
| wormilled rockturned starblind
| darkness and cold into
| [the opposite of dust][].  I need the heat
| to blind me.  I need the dumb making
| to charge my coldened blood.  I need
| the dropturned leaves to turn again
| their [faces to the windblown sun][].
| I need millions of tiny years
| summed up and burning out some unknown
| new growth into the air.  I need four
| hundred feet of dark red gnarled wood
| and needles glistening wetly on goldheaded
| branches hoisting themselves
| to the sky.  I need ten strong men
| to fail to bring you down.  Old one
| I need the peace that comes with knowing
| something sacred holds still
| in the world.  I need your green tongues
| [of flame to lick at old wounds][]
| stitching us together away from ourselves.
| I need your brownbranching grasp
| to keep me from drifting off
| into [unknowing terrible sleep][].  I need
| [to know the snake][] hanging
| from your branches.  I need to watch
| the dropping of flesh massful
| onto the ground from a height.  I need
| the gnawer at your root to strike
| a vein to quicken old brown stone
| to movement.  I need jeweleyed venom
| barking new greennesses into the bark.
| I need a knocker of dark secrets hidden
| in the dark bark hiding a smallstone
| smoldering pearl in the knot.  I need
| that [pearl held out in a hand][] like an offering.
| I need the hand to be a plant's hand.

| I need a plant.  I need a growing
| growler [groaning][] toward heat and air.
| I need a green thin stem surprisingly strong
| holding up the weight of a plain
| of fallow [greennesses of creases and caresses][]
| of tiny worldmaking hardworking grandeur.
| I need a singer of life crying
| forward into old roads covered over
| by dead trees.  I need the rasping of root
| in dirt.  I need the unfurling of fiddleheads
| to sing forth a new symphony.  I need
| fruits swelling large for the harvest.
| I need yellow light shining through white bark.
| I need juicecrush flowing waterlike
| through valleys percolating up
| through the ground.  I need springs bubbling sap
| into cabins of wood fought for by labor.
| I need snow on the ground with shoots
| dotting the melting patches.  I need two
| leaves on a thin stalk shivering
| in [moonlight][].  I need robinsong warbling
| over the heads of small seeds sprouting
| to enliven their growth.  I need rings
| of woody material widening to push
| the ground out of their way.  I need
| new greennesses pushing out from
| the brown dark bark gnarled.  I
| need the robin to build its songfilled
| nest in a [branchcrotch][].  I need
| the fecundity of fungi on the branches.
| I need quiet of the sunlight shooting
| through thousands of branched leaves
| quivering.  [I need whisper at dawn.][]
| I need burrows underground foxholes.
| I need duff layers eaten through
| by worms.  I need brooks murmuring
| through crooks of roots.  I need small
| [fish swimming][] in their schools at
| midnight.  I need oldnesses giving way
| [to youngnesses giving way to oldnesses][].
| I need dapplegray yellowshot ashbark.
| I need the crunch of dead leaves underfoot.
| I need [snowquiet deadbranch][] mourning.
| I need those [purple mountains majesty][].
| I need a walk between trees in the dark.
| I need that moment when stopping to rest
| it suddenly seems that all the weary
| [forestroads][] in all their meandering come
| [to rest their heads][] at my astonished
| feet, none of them needing more than me.

[blackdirt]: building.html
[thin green window]: window.html
[magic]: cereal.html
[to rest their heads]: riptide_memory.html
[forestroads]: http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html
[purple mountains majesty]: http://www.wrensworld.com/purpmount.htm
[snowquiet deadbranch]: one-hundred-lines.html
[to youngnesses giving way to oldnesses]: about-the-author.html
[fish swimming]: proverbs.html
[I need whisper at dawn.]: apollo11.html
[branchcrotch]: epigraph.html
[moonlight]: finding-the-lion.html
[greennesses of creases and caresses]: the-sea_the-beach.html
[groaning]: feedingtheraven.html
[pearl held out in a hand]: roughgloves.html
[to know the snake]: ouroboros_memory.html
[unknowing terrible sleep]: in-bed.html
[of flame to lick at old wounds]: fire.html
[faces to the windblown sun]: no-nothing.html
[the opposite of dust]: https://samofthetenthousandthings.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/charles-wright-reads-james-wright-the-journey-audio-poem/