The 42nd Parallel

The Plant Wizard

Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,

he walked round the woods one winter

crunching through the shinycrusted snow

stumbled into a little dell where a warm spring was

and found the grass green and weeds sprouting

and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,

He went home and sat by the stove and read Darwin

Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural

Selection that wasn’t what they taught in church,

so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,

found a seedball in a potato plant

sowed the seed and cashed in on Mr. Darwin’s Natural Selection

on Spencer and Huxley

with the Burbank Potato.

Young man go west;

Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa

full of his dream of green grass in winter ever

blooming flowers ever

bearing berries; Luther Burbank

could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbank

carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winter

and seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus—

winters were bleak in that bleak

brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts—

out to sunny Santa Rosa;

and he was a sunny old man

where roses bloomed all year

everblooming everbearing

hybrids.

America was hybrid

America should cash in on Natural Selection.

He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and Natural

Selection and the influence of the mighty dead

and a good firm shipper’s fruit

suitable for canning.

He was one of the grand old men until the churches

and the congregations

got wind that he was an infidel and believed

in Darwin.

Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil,

selecting improved hybrids for America

those sunny years in Santa Rosa.

But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time;

he wouldn’t give up Darwin and Natural Selection

and they stung him and he died

puzzled.

They buried him under a cedartree.

His favorite photograph

was of a little tot

standing beside a bed of hybrid

everblooming double Shasta daisies

with never a thought of evil

And Mount Shasta

in the background, used to be a volcano

but they don’t have volcanos

any more.