Obsession with Hunting Greens

Orville is a tax consultant
and good at it
a rather cold-eyed type
but if you ever get to know him
I mean really know him
out on a golf course
on the manicured links
at some point he will break down
and talk about picking greens
with his mother
back in the bottomlands of Arkansas
He will lean on a club and tell you solemnly

"I carried a tin dishpan for Mama
and followed behind her
When she spotted the best greens
she would stoop down and cut them
with a sharp little knife I remember dandelion and dock
wild lettuce and pokeroot"
He will frown when he mentions pokeroot

"The berries made beautiful purple ink
but they were poisonous and I'm not sure
the roots weren't
but Mama cooked them down with
salt pork and we never had any trouble"

Notes

McDaniel, Wilma. (2001) Borrowed Coats. Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York.
Courtesy University of California, Merced Library. Copyright owned by the Regents of the University of California.