Skunk Cabbage
A long way from the quags of Nova Scotia,
stowaway beneath the cherry laurel thicket,
more triffid than cabbage, your skunk
mustard and garlic to some, rotting meat
to beetles. I’ve stumbled across your invasion,
trespassers to the boggy margins of the stream,
no horrors behind your lemon spathe,
only your floral spike, lovechild of a cactus
and a toadstool, now rooted in the rhizosphere
where you learned the language of the bog-soil,
welcomed yourself, airdropped by a woodpigeon,
carrying the false passport of a garden lily.
You’re listed as a botanical alien, a blow-in,
hogging the light from that which belong here,
to be dug up and quarantined. Protest all you like,
the wheat fields don’t understand you, nor
the hedgerows, they gave up caring years ago,
but I’ll keep shtum, forget I ever saw you,
leave you warm-blooded in this stank grove,
me a trespasser too, strayed from the path,
passing with the stream, the stream that belongs
to nowhere, answers to nothing but the rain,
and the woods that say, if you weren’t meant
to be here swamp thing, you wouldn’t be.
Dan Stathers is a poet and wildlife enthusiast from Kingsbridge, South Devon who also sometimes dabbles in oneliners for radio.