Painted-cup Paintbrush · Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail

Painted-Cup Paintbrush

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by Hilary Plum

problem of naming starts young

in the woods

pond the size of a lake and manmade

dammed up and smoothly

rising industrial banks          shitty little playground

to the sound of the dog pound’s dogs barking and

goose shit

everywhere      plastic buoys marked the safe

or allowed space, my brother a lifeguard

the camp counselors all tried to flirt with but

he scanned and scanned the water

for disappearing children

                             contrary to popular

drowning is silent and subtle, lack of wave

lack of splash

                             contrary to

it was then called, the flower, “Indian Paintbrush”

I looked for it red orange yellow in the low

surprise of the woods, endlessly fine up close or a smear

of bright color in Connecticut           the problem

with the name not something a child could finally name 

or not me           the place is inscribed and you are

with a long violence whose paths are your own, around

the pond with bright paint on bark marking and your white

ancestors insisting in Latin “he who is transplanted” 

                             “Bicentennial Pond”

I circled and circled it to grow up

nothing            could be more perfect than finding

silent and bright that flower the paintbrush somewhere

beyond and amid

geese honking raucous, Canadian bird-clowns

shit slick beneath kid feet           “still sustains”          we moved away

taking books, dishes, leaving my orange room

within the paintbrush’s big exquisite territory 

                         “endangered in Connecticut”

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