McCormick's Creek, Indiana, 1942

 for my mother, Carol Kirkwood Fall Stickney

Saint Genevieve Limestone, 

Crystalline and fine,

Channels White River,

Backdrops a young woman

Resplendent amidst trees

The creek's a slipping mirror

Displays, cradles, deflects

All manner of revelry

She makes pilgrimage

To Mayapple carpet

Beneath deciduous grove,

Palmate leaves cup pure blossoms,

Tensile stems tweak

Like dowsing wands,

Send sweet fruits to forest floor

In her cabin near Wolf Cave,

She fashions herbarium

Of specimens,

Presses Synandra, Pale Violet,

False Solomon's Seal,

Affixes samples to boards,

Holds posed stalks like attributes

Outside, bats stage nighttime

Arabesques,

While she sorts harvests

By lantern light 

Soon a road north will bring her

To South Bend's treeless

Mud-divisioned flats,

The creek's a slipping mirror

Displays, cradles, deflects

All manner of revelry

Laura Stickney  2017

top image, photograph of 

Carol Kirkwood Fall Stickney,

1942, McCormick's Creek, IN

lower image, Mayapple plant,

Izel plants