I.
You are the plant who tells the truth
(as if other plants are fickle).

Your flowers are purple.
Your leaves are amplexicaul.
Your seed pods are known as siliques.

Their stubble reminds me of a dice game.

I count them – no ones, twos, threes.
I see some fours, fives, sixes,
sevens, eights, no nines.

To count in nines is just too terrifying.

II.
I was brought up to tell the truth thinking
it would lead to praise, to handclaps,

not to snotty sobbing no tissues
can stem, no pillow can smother, no word.

I did not know that truth is ugly and unflowerlike.

That your long long taproot reaches into the underworld
where the dark moons of your seeds fall and fall
and fall and fall and fall and germinate.

III.
Lunaria, you are like the moon,
waxing and waning, the call of magic
that attempts to assemble all the parts of my soul

in the dark tower of your being before the time of your fall.

The dark nun, the dark magician speaking
our truths in our tears and blood,

learning discipline and devotion
to the truths before our eyes.

V.
In your presence
we are held by our God
who is the darkness of the edges
all around us even when He is asleep or dead
haunting the shadows of the inbetween places in leafy dapples.

VI.
There are two sides to your coin, to your money pennies, to your bets.

You pose the question of how many nuns are in the void,
how many spirits of Annwn can dance
on my fingertips.

As many
as the seeds
that will fall in my garden
this year and grow and germinate

beneath the soil and beneath my skin

as I strive to make a study in honesty
through the seasons
every year.