A Poem by Carole Mertz

In Defense of the Catkin

For a new dictionary
they took away such words
as cowslip, newt, and bluebell
to make space for cut-and-paste,

chatroom, and bullet-point.
PC elements favored
over Nature's own--
how dare they?

A poet might offer these words
for wet places
near rivers:  allan, eyot, haft,
feorainn, halh and holm.

To write of nature we need
Nature's own vocabulary.
In my dictionary feorainn
is lacking, but fern seed is there,
holm is there, and hollyhock too.

But "river" words are all too few
with space reserved for halogen,
anodize, and such.  Without
broadband, I-cloud and block-graph
we'd manage,

but how would we describe
real clouds, the garden, and rivers flowing?
Against this corruption if we listen, we'll hear
Nature talking back.

(Long live Macfarlane, Lopez, Thoreau,
Muir, Stafford and Stevens!)

Poems by Carole Mertz appeared in Every Day Poems, Indiana Voice Journal, Lutheran Digest, Page & Spine, Rockford Review, WPWT, WestWard Quarterly, and in various anthologies.  Her poems placed  first in several of Wilda Morris' Poetry Challenges.  Her poetry reviews are printed in Arc Poetry Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Copperfield Review, CutBank, Mom Egg Review, and World Literature Today.  Carole enjoys teaching piano to young children.