Eve Hoffman
Eve Hoffman lives on a remnant of the Georgia dairy farm where she grew up. Still seeks out dirt roads and Guernsey cream. Published work includes full-length Memory & Complicity, Mercer University Press, nominated for Georgia poetry book of the year. Chapbooks Red Clay and SHE. A Celebration of Healing stories of twenty models impacted by breast cancer to accompany Sal Brownfield’s paintings. She’s been honored as a Remarkable Woman by her alma mater Smith College for linking business and public education leaders. evehoffmanpoet.com
Her Mother Taught Her to Name Plants
roadsides and ditches of thistle and purple vetchgolden tickseed and blue cornflowers taught her to return smiles to velvet pansy faces to blow on dandelions gone to seed to pull daisy petals one at a time He loves me /loves–me-not She taught her lavenders dilly-dally sultanas grow impatient dragonssnap to attention when four-o-clocks toll Jack preaches from his pulpit of trillium and golden chanterelles She taught her daughter to listen for the crack of antlers as white tail bucks spar to not be afraid of the crack of lightening or of five foot black king snakes which eat rats and copperheads nor to be terrified by the chilling call of tiny screech owls at night and packs of baying houndstreeing racoons not to fear the Chattahoochee rising from its river bend flooding the bottomlands She taught her daughter to eavesdrop on the breath of iris tulips and daffodils on the whisper of spring in woodland hills of bloodroot and mayapple taught her daughter to listen to the silence of a box turtle resting in the middle of a road the rattling bugle of a sedge of migrating sandhill cranes 5000 feet overhead taught her to find four-leaf clovers and to avoid poison ivy not to eat pokeweed holly berries or foxglove the sweetness of jasmine magnolia and gardenias taught her southern history of cotton indigo tobacco sugar cane She taught her daughter Ursa Major cradling the big dipper in night skies thatladies slip home past curfew and Susan tends a black eye
on America’s doorstep a dark-eyed girl sit on a cage floor
her mother had taught her to name plants lupinespaloverde purslane the resurrection plant which survives extreme drought and Spanish missionariesused to preach resurrection taught her to readthe arroyos mesas mudflat playas to name cacti organ pipe hedgehog barrel pincushion cholla She welcomed her into sanctuaries of giant saguarowhere gila woodpeckers and gilded flickers drill nesting holes taught her butterflies and moths sulphurs swallowtailsgossamer winged nocturnal moths white sphynx tigersmariposa de noche taught her to listen for swarms of bees gathering nectar and pollen in poppyfields for lizards scampering rocks for the thunderof a prowling male bobcat in mating season She taught her daughter medicinal properties of passion flower desert lavender and prickly pear the deadly properties of nightshadered spotted caps of fly agaric mushrooms of diamondback rattlesnakes the Rio Grande temperament and of two and four legged coyotes taught her to make acedia echinacea and brittle bush tea the cleansing power of white sage She taught her daughter the archeology of abandoned migrant rest stops backpacks beddinga single dried up child’s sandalthreadbare t-shirts used diapers. empty candy wrappers She taught her daughter to sign the cross when passing bodies and bones in desert scorch and to pray remembrance for their nameless souls on the Day of the Dead after rainstorms they cartwheeled together though pastures of desert flowers She taught her daughter to sing harmony with the North Star.
