Encounter on Main Street (verse)
Hartsock, Ernest
Ioo T H E C O M M O N W E A L May 29, I929 then I slipped to the ground which was no short dis- tance away. I pushed on his head toward the centre of the road and succeeded in bending his...
...When I released him in his own pasture, I reported to his owner the chief item of his lunch for that day with the request that he keep a close watch on the mule and learn if the poison ivy had any visible ill effects...
...These are the ,ones that Nathan seemed to find acceptable to his appetite that day: great ragweed, known as bullweed...
...He ate the primrose, Poor Joe and wild lettuce rather sparingly...
...tick trefoil and red clover...
...greenbrier and blue vervain...
...Poor Joe...
...When I stand in the smoke of this hated plant while it is being burned, the fumes carry their poison as perfectly as the green leaves and stems do, and I come away with enough of it to cause me to break out...
...wild lettuce...
...When I looked at the plant he was devouring so greedily, I almost gasped for breath...
...bristly crowfoot...
...lespedeza...
...But why he sought so eagerly and ate so hungrily of poison ivy I cannot explain, unless his system was in such a condition that it required the very elements that poison ivy contains to bring his health back to the normal mule standard...
...Ioo T H E C O M M O N W E A L May 29, I929 then I slipped to the ground which was no short distance away...
...Who out ol mirth's immortal host Was this extravagant young ghost ? Not blowsy Bacchus nor bow-legged Pan-- Nessus...
...The poison ivy he seemed to enjoy best of all...
...For three hours Nathan continued to graze, and when we returned home, he appeared just about as hungry as he had when we started out...
...partridge pea...
...water parsnip ; upland boneset...
...Finally I gave up my trip and let him graze by the roadside, and while he ate most greedily, I listed the plants that he chose for food and those that he rejected...
...And, since I thought I didn't know him, Immune, I trapped him in a poem...
...joepye-weed...
...Judas tree...
...young black locust...
...Then in a flash I caught his ruse, Hearing the raastle of his shoes, And knowing by their silver whirr: Herbes, the heavenly messenger...
...Narcissus...
...Any person who is familiar with plants will not marvel over Nathan's list of rejected, especially the Golden Alexander, water parsnip, honewort and cgw- bane...
...broad-leaf uniola...
...When I turned it loose, it sprang back to its original position as a bent strip of tough rubber...
...horseweed...
...It seems a coincidence that he chose sixteen varieties for food and rejected an equal number...
...Golden Alex-ander...
...common primrose...
...When my arms come in contact with it, the poison penetrates my shirt sleeves and raises blisters with transparent tops on my flesh...
...Virginia creeper...
...Then I gathered Johnson grass, great ragweed and red clover, all of which are favorite food plants of sane horses and mules, but Nathan refused to quit the ivy for any of them...
...white-top...
...honewort...
...Poison ivy l This coarse, vile plant had matted a fence post from top to bottom and the veteran vines still stuck up two feet higher...
...In a few days, blisters rose up on my bare arm which Nathan had accidentally touched with his poisoned saliva, and each day for a week the report came to me that Nathan had never seemed quite so spry and that he was still in possession of his usual good appetite...
...My complaining hips insisted that I walk and lead my mule...
...Satyr...
...Johnson grass...
...poison ivy...
...For a half hour with bated breath I watched Nathan stripping that five-foot post of every shred of ivy leaves and greenish berries...
...Now here was something far more interesting than the objective of my bareback ride...
...All along the way Nathan reached out for tasty bits of green vegetation, and twice his moist lips accidently touched and wet my bare arm...
...Vegetation grew luxuriantly about the roadside, because the no-fence law had been in effect long enough to keep the browsing cattle away...
...cowbane...
...The book locked in his fingertips Seemed bursting with apocalypse, And like a god in deft disguise, A dream swept sudden in his eyes Like beauty's august fire that blows Breaking the crimson brain of the rose...
...The plants Nathan rejected were: Solomon's Seal...
...white-topped aster...
...I decided to stand by and witness the first animal that I could remember seeing devour a plant that is so poisonous to my own flesh that even when I walk among its vines wearing thin leather shoes, it poisons my feet...
...The hat that sheathed his golden head Was armored ardor of the dead...
...So in my skull's parenthesis I said: What shall I make of this...
...I pushed on his head toward the centre of the road and succeeded in bending his neck awry...
...wild rye...
...Fortunately for me no automobile appeared, and as usual my worries were in vain...
...goldenrod...
...So, after all, shall we learn that poison ivy, that most hated of all the common wild plants, has its uses in the scheme of natural progress ? Encounter on Main Street I saw a traveler on our street With aeons flaking from his feet, Shod with the shoes of cataclysm...
...trumpet creeper...
...The tune he whistled seemed to speak The wood-flute cadence of the Greek...
...So I sang to myself: Ali's well for menm A poet has found the gods again...
...His shadow was an agate's prism, And, woodpecker's telegraph, His cane tapped a staccato laugh...
...I beat, I kicked, but my mule chewed solemnly on...
...ERNEST HARTSOCK...
...broom sedge...
Vol. 10 • May 1929 • No. 4
