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 bedof chaste lavender, dwarfedat the foot of amaranth. Not even cleaver’s sticky embracewith 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 gaietyand 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 bodieson my way to clary sage’s pluming scent. No, I will not kill today. I will breathe in, rest—and breeze—and breathe out.
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 gaietyand 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 bodieson my way to clary sage’s pluming scent. No, I will not kill today. I will breathe in, rest—and breeze—and breathe out.
