Curly Dock

My love, My Dearest, Curly Dock,

As snowflakes pile around my door today, my house is warm and my tea is hot.  I should be happy, but you are not here.  I should curl up in a blanket, read a book.  Yet I pace the floors, thinking only of you.  My heart pounding, my blood racing, as I imagine our spring reunion.

         
You'd hate it in here, inside, so hot and soft. You are happy beneath your frozen snow, wedged between jagged rocks, and sleeping along roadsides.  When the time is right, you will rise up.  Soon we shall be together again. But I miss you now. 

         
How blind I was when we were first introduced!  I saw you around town and took you for decorations, adding your rusty red seed stalks to fall bouquets.  I heard gossip that your long, lance-shaped, rough, wavey-edged leaves were edible.  How I laughed, fool that I was!  

         
Secretly, I tried one.  I knew it was you, Curly Dock, by your stalk of rattling old seed pods, brick red, and rising 2-4 feet tall.  You were on a city trail, behind warehouses, along railroad tracks.  Do you remember?  I took one of your alternating leaves straight from the stalk.  No branches interfered.  But you were tough, and ridiculously bitter.  "Maybe, if it were the last food on earth!"  I ignorantly laughed. 

           
All over the Inland Northwest, plants hibernated for winter, but along the Snake River on that fateful day, you were there.  You'll remember the freezing night, the frosted sleeping bags.  Down in that canyon, the sun, like my love, was long in rising.  It seeped through the river fog, and climbed above the craggy buttes.  I climbed a little too and found a perch to watch the sun dance with the cold river as the fog slipped into nothing, like a specter finally satisfied.  I stopped shivering and melted into the lichen splotched rocks.

         
When I opened my eyes again, I saw you there, nestled by my side.  Yellow green, the gold sun shone through your newest leaves.  For the first time, I saw you, really saw you.  You were young and fresh, soft and juicy. 

         
I look your tender leaf into my mouth.  And the two became one.  You were lemony and light, the flavor of sunshine, with a refreshing bitterness, like the cold of early spring . 

           
That day gleams bright in my memory.  The day I first loved you for who you are: a beautiful, wild soul, sweet and sharp all at once.  Cities and roads make you intolerably tough, but this is where you shine, in the wild. 

         
 Surprisingly, we have similarities: both European introductions, long since naturalized. 

         
You're wealthy with protein, calcium, iron and potassium. With more vitamin C than oranges, more Vitamin A than carrots, I've found a diamond in the rough.  Rumors has it you're good for liver, blood, lymph nodes, sores, and joints.  Some say you are anti-bacterial and anti-fungal (Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies by Linda Kershaw).  I love that strong vein of resistance in you.

           
More adventures await we two!  Member of the Buckwheat family, your seeds could be boiled for a thrilling mush or ground to deeply satisfying flour.

We might even boil you large leaves, changing the hot water as we steam the kitchen.

         
This is what makes winters so hard: being without you, unable to reach you, and waiting, waiting for early spring to find you.  You won't make me wait long, though.  I can trust that.  You'll be easy to spot too, because last years seed stalk will still be tall and red. 

         
I've noticed your cousins, Sheep and Mountain Sorrels, almost mistaking them for you.  They're fine, but what an embarrassing faux pas that would be! Before I pluck you again, I will know that you are none other than Rumex crispus.

         
When I am finally plucked from this world, I vow to return to you the nourishment and sustenance you have given me.  That is love: giving and receiving.

         
It sounds trite and simplistic, but it's the only way I know how to express it:  I love you, Curly Dock.  Happy Valentine's Day.

            -Yours truly and forever,  Sarajoy Van Boven