Poetry
from Vol. 16, No. 2
Purple Loosestrife
Encroaches everywhere wet
on impulse, by wind, bird, or insect;
strife is loose, infests unruffled green,
though purple is color complementary,
an herb that doesn’t have to strive
(or only in a loose sense of the word)
to invade. Scientists suggest not pesticides
but biological control: five kinds of beetle.
Quirkily misnamed from Gr. lysis, loosening,
and machesthai, fight. It has medicinal
powers, such as staunching wounds.
Empedocles was wise: the counterforce
of Strife is Love, which is also apt to spread,
to disseminate hardy seeds into the startled air.
Nancy Kassell’s work has appeared in Notre Dame Review, Borderlands, Eclipse, Willow Springs, Peregrine, Westview, Salamander, and in the anthologies Verse and Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics, and Family Reunion: Poems about Parenting Grown Children. She lives in Brookline, MA.