Marianne von Willemer to Goethe, circa 1816
I sent one to you while you were at work—
as if an artichoke could make a wife
of me—a thistle for your fork,
Cynara cardunculus, after a quick
dip in olive oil and lemon. “Poison,”
you once wrote, was not some Secret Thief,
but “the intensity of the dose.”
The edible portion of the globe
is the bud before the bloom—
a clustered inflorescence—with bracts
on the reproductive axis. In Metamorphosis
of Plants you documented tiny lanes
of leaves, their “locked-in given form”
so cruel that they became adaptable.
Perhaps the delivery experienced delay—
bloomed buds and coarser leaves,
a barely edible form. You still reach
for the plate, take the knife, and search
through the innermost bracts and base
to find a mass both known as heart and choke.
Taylor Light's poems have appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, THINK, Terrain.org, Hawai'i Pacific Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MA from Texas Tech University, and is currently an MFA student at the University of Florida.
