Sweet Angelica, An overwhelm of your leafy ramifications, waxed verdure affections for a wayward wind. My eyes caught the emerald glint; now they glisten green in a poetic apotheosis.
Should I deem you guilty that 'twas the devil's walking stick that sired you, as virid envelope, so delicate that every leaflet would blend to a fine herb repast.
So I brave your prickly defences in my manner of white tailed deer and nibble of your leafy poetry. A half mouthed curse that you sting but your arbour rose where none grew and I thought you bloomed especially for me.
Rhizomes spiralled for life, and the taste of muddied rain. Other wanderers tried pillage those jejune early fronds and you recoiled in thorny armament, a conflicted poetry I read on you.
Look at you now ... largest leaf than any other in a North wind, towering panicles that draw a chorus of winged angels, quills. These be the battlements of love that will shed for life, in beauty
for when Summer leaves, there'll be Fall, then the long rest of seasons.
I was struck by the leafy beauty of the Angelica tree which I came across at the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on the Virginia half of Assateague Island that we visited recently. Read further at: davinasolomon.org/2021/06/15/for-angelica/
The trunk and petioles bear spines, a stem modification in defence from foragers, that makes it also quite deer resistant. The spines also gave it the common name of ‘devil’s walking stick’ or ‘prickly ash’.