07

I love unnoticed plants that grow beside a stream

orioles singing overhead somewhere in the trees

at dusk the current quickens fed by springtime rains

I pull myself across on an unmanned country ferry.



— Wei Ying-Wu, translated by Red Pine in Poems Of The Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, Copper Canyon Press

Thank you for calling The Botanarchy Hotline. The Botanarchy Hotline is medicine disguised as a poem delivered through the portal of your phone. It’s a ham-radio séance between you and the living Earth, for those ready to be bewildered back to life.

The transmission at the end of your telephone line is Episode 7: I Love Unnoticed Plants That Grow Beside A Stream. It’s the last week of Spring, the final riot of wildflowers are shaking their hips in the canyon breezes, the streams are swollen with spring rains, and today we’re pulling ourselves across the river — one unnoticed plant at a time.

In a culture of billboard-sized beauty, there’s a sacred rebellion in loving what grows unseen. What roots itself without permission, what blooms without an audience, what leans into the muddy kiss of the banks and asks nothing in return.