Sense and Nonsense

Don't ask me about sense of place. I can remember people's deepest secrets but forget their names, what year it was, or even what city we were in.

The first time I was challenged to write from a sense of place was in a poetry workshop. Our assignment on day one was to walk around the grounds, settle on one spot, and spend an hour noticing every detail — no notes — then write a poem describing what we saw.

I chose daisies. Daisies, I'd been told, represent simplicity and innocence. And of course I knew their prophetic powers. I did not know their name is a corruption of "Day's Eye," thus anointed because they close at night and open in daylight. Nor did I realize their family includes such exotic cousins as artichoke and endive, their healing kin Echinacea and Arnica.

Really, though, wouldn't you want to know Henry VIII ate daisies to relieve ulcer pain? I, frankly, am glad he suffered something for his ill treatment of Anne, and wish he'd also drunk crushed daisies steeped in wine - an ancient cure for insanity.

My Day's Eyes were not historians. Daisies with sense might have bragged of stems and leaves, colors or varieties, dispersion. Mine were an intuitive lot. They gave me the finger, said Screw with me if you dare, declined to be members of a simpering bouquet, and pled For God's sake / do-not-tear-me-apart-piece-by-piece / to find out if you're loved.