Folklore Friday: Wolfsbane
maybe in the woods
Hello, friends! If you’re a paid subscriber, you already know that poisonous plants are featuring in the remainder of 2024’s Folklore Friday poems. Eventually I’ll organize my Substack so that my posts will be easy to find by subject (fingers crossed), should you want to look back over this year’s Folklore Fridays. But for now here is one I wrote about contrary little sunshine death flowers.
In my highly academic opinion, Wolfsbane is one of the coolest sounding plants. Also known as Monkshood, the name Wolfsbane comes from Medieval times, when doctors prescribed derivatives of the plant as a cure for lycanthropy. People also used to plant it in the hopes of keeping werewolves away.
And of course, it’s poisonous.
Today’s post is shorter than I’d like due to time constraints, but I had fun with this poem, and I hope you enjoy it.
Maybe in the Woods
Maybe she could have kept a bunch
of them in her pocket
as she traversed the wood.
Would they have allowed her
to reach her destination
without trouble?
But maybe
the sly creature would have only laughed
and said,
“You are no monk, my dear,
your hood is red, not blue,
and I–
I am only a wolf.”
Maybe
flowers are no match for the sharp blade
of lived experience.
© Stephanie Ascough
