MOUNTAIN MISERY

Someone wanted an identification of a wild lily,
once called Zigadine, now Toxicoscordion fremontii.
My eyeballs weren't yet awake. Batting 50/50,
I mis-ID the bearmat as gold-back fern.
Then realized no self-respecting gold-back fern
would ever grow out in the open like that.
And the location, pine foothills...
But I know a death camas when I see it.

I loved saying the old name, Zigadine!
One of the few Latin plant names I know by heart.
The way it explodes off the tongue
and becomes something like shooting stars.
I never once called it a Fremont lily,
for John C. Frémont was a toxic mass-murderer
of the California Indians. And he fomented a revolt
for personal gain, choosing a bear as his bandolier.

I never knew the other moniker, and was horrified
to discover that I had transplanted death camas
to our lower field where we grazed horses in spring.
No wonder the gophers always left it alone.
And luckily, the horses did too.

As for the bearmat, aka kit-kit-dizze, 
which is also a placename where
poet Gary Snyder lives, on North San Juan Ridge.
My old boyfriend from Grass Valley,
who admired Gary Snyder from afar,
and accidentally introduced me to poetry,
said that the bears liked to roll on it.

I loved the tarry odor of the leaves, but they're clingy.
Some folks call it mountain misery, or bear clover.
Despite its lovely white rose petal blossoms,
bearmat is the bane of careless hikers and dogs,
because it's so stickery, and its seeds are hitchhikers.
It has some redeeming qualities as well,
you can make rheumatism tea from the leaves.
Maybe the bears had rheumatism too.
We were always on the lookout for it.
And the bears. But when the words found me,
much to my old boyfriend's chagrin,
he ambled off into the mountain misery,
never to be seen again.

4/20/18