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    The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones
    The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones
    The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones
    Ebook133 pages39 minutes

    The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones

    By Margaret Randall

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    About this ebook

    A poetry collection about connectivity, this book argues that humankind is linked by its concerns for global human rights and a sustainable global climate. Named for a root system that connects seemingly separate plants, like a stand of aspen trees, this compilation seeks to celebrate common human roots.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWings Press
    Release dateJun 1, 2013
    ISBN9781609402747
    The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones
    Author

    Margaret Randall

    Writer and social activist Margaret Randall is the author of more than eighty published books, including To Change the World: My Years in Cuba (2009) and, most recently, As If the Empty Chair / Como si la silla vaca (a bilingual book of poetry) and First Laugh (essays). She lives in Albuquerque.

    Read more from Margaret Randall

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      Book preview

      The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones - Margaret Randall

      The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones

      From hops to orchids,

      ginger to the sanctified bloom

      we call Lily of the Valley

      a horizontal stem

      or root mass

      moves beneath the ground,

      feeling its way,

      choosing where it will wake and rise

      in yet another multiplying mirror

      we hold to history.

      The ancient Greeks gave us

      this anatomy: rhizome

      as key to vegetable resistance.

      Utah’s Pando colony

      of Quaking Aspen

      a million years young.

      Neither foragers, insects,

      fungus nor fire

      shatters the design

      of its secret hiding place.

      At this level of our fractal universe

      elegant fern

      and plebian Bermuda grass,

      purple nut sedge

      or obstinate poison oak

      wait at trail edge

      for the next hiker’s

      bare legs:

      all speak the language of rhizome

      to our grateful ears.

      We who see a field

      of broken bones

      view pale faces

      on memory’s imprint

      befriend the rhizome:

      neither beginning nor end.

      Balanced at midpoint,

      it resists chronology

      and we claim our place

      as nomads on a savage map of risk.

      Not linear narrative but radiant grid

      where four dimensional images dance

      and one rain forest butterfly

      bloats a Kansas funnel cloud

      with energy unmeasured

      by the lab scientist

      willing to consider

      a million lives collateral damage,

      intent only on his chance

      at the big prize.

      Imagine you are a child

      in Phnom Penh,

      the skulls creeping rootstalks,

      one sprouting another

      from its node

      of ideology gone insane,

      twenty sprouting a thousand,

      two million, a landscape

      where above ground and below

      a single terror moves.

      Pull your only legacy back

      through Treblinka’s classrooms

      where desperate teachers

      help children wrap memory

      paint freedom

      on comforting squares of paper.

      Wander among piles of shoes,

      mountains of human hair,

      each new node

      an evil birthing.

      Rest yourself in phantom Elazig,

      now Turkey in denial,

      where thousands of Armenians

      lived and loved

      before the genocide.

      Contemplate the sharp edge

      of a Rwandan machete

      and try to remember if you

      wielded the weapon or knew its steel

      against your throat.

      Enter this complex community

      through its back door,

      breach its rockiest border

      and break the hold

      steep systems of convention

      have on you.

      Open yourself to time

      in every dimension.

      Welcome a new home.

      Today I am one more

      body of water

      filling available space,

      trickling down

      through fissure and gap

      toward a new map,

      eroding what stands in my way.

      You may try to interrupt my dance

      but your ugly language

      leaves no signature.

      La Llorona

      It should come as no surprise.

      I found her

      by the banks of the San Antonio.

      I know, you’d think she’d choose

      the Rio Grande or Colorado

      for her nightly walks:

      rivers of strength and purpose,

      dividing nations or raging

      through the greatest canyon of them all.

      But I knew

      she preferred more intimate beauty.

      I’d done my homework.

      I almost didn’t hear her whispered wail

      between the moan of freight trains

      charging night

      in that south Texas city.

      I thought I discerned a minor key,

      high harmony in late September

      and followed the sound

      notebook in hand,

      sharpened pencil ready.

      Around the bend she sat alone,

      magnificent profile

      hidden beneath her long black veil

      I confused at first

      with tree shadows in quiet air.

      Almost midnight,

      still high nineties.

      Who could sleep?

      I thought she might run

      but she turned

      slowly toward me,

      seemed resigned to talk.

      Gain her confidence: oral historian’s trick

      before sympathy heated my blood

      and for one brief moment

      I felt what she felt

      so many centuries before.

      Do you mind if I sit, I trembled,

      and she gave me to understand

      scorn is a lonely companion,

      she’d like the company.

      Even legends

      endure mistaken identity.

      Fearful she’d fade in this Texas heat

      I

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