Skunk Cabbage

Symplocarpus foetidus

Here’s to the skunk cabbage, first plant to raise a toast to spring,

even if it sometimes has to melt a hole right through the ice,

a plant that grows its own hothouse

& keeps it at 22 degrees Celsius for weeks on end.

Half monk, half cobra, it shares its solitude

with the earliest flies & beetles, whose springtime fancy

turns to putrefaction: gut piles, winter-killed deer, & in the swamp

a leathery curl of old meat. It gives off a heat & fragrance

the real thing can rarely match— pornography for insects.

Only after pollination is consummated does the skunk cabbage unfurl

its eponymous leaves— huge sails with yellow stitching

& a green that stays fresh long into the summer,

while dark berries swell on the spadix

& the roots tighten their grip on the pungent mud,

the whole plant inching into the earth.