✨ Black Elderberry

Window light glancing...

Black Elderberry

Sambucus canadensis

Little mother,
waiting in the branches,
courtyard changing
summer heat to long snow.

Child waking from a nap
of decades passing, leaves
yellowing, falling,
coming green again.

Window light
glancing through jelly jars,
quivering violet
on the blue-stained table.

My wild elder, wisdom
in a fragrant corymb,
elixir in a beetle windstorm—
gold wings, and blue. 

—Jules Jacob and Sonja Johanson

✨ Come hear Jules Jacob and Sonja Johanson read from their new collection at our Year of the Monarch garden party in October!

Poem and illustration from Rappaccini’s Garden: Poisonous Poetry, White Stag Publishing, LLC, Copyright © 2024. Used by permission of the publisher. Photo by Alla Kemelmakher, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.