Baptisia Australis, false
indigo its common name,
a kind of memorial to austral
Carolina when darkened hands
tilled and harvested and keened
the fields, fields now fallow,
abandoned to the wildness of forest or
wildness of forest suburban.
False indigo knobs early, small
green stalagmites thrusting like
cigars from the soil before branching
into green stems, stems that splash
purple-blue, turning to pods that dry
and darken, rattling in the wind like
maracas until they rupture an
infant baptism of seed.
