MSKOZE / Red She Is

From the poet: I wanted to find an Indigenous name for Lobelia cardinalis. Commonly called Cardinal Flower, this plant is native to much of the Americas. The search for an Indigenous name was not as simple as I'd imagined. It became a journey into ecology, ethnobotany, language, history, and colonization. Down a magic well I went, with a plant as a teacher.

In my search, I wished to honor local knowledge. I looked to the Potawatomi nations, for whom this place is home. I like to think that the very oldest trees in my neighborhood once heard the lush sounds of Potawatomi language.

As I searched, poems arose. They varied in form, as if they had minds of their own. There was also energy created in the process of, as Joy Harjo terms it, "knowledge gathering," and it, too, required a voice. This energy resulted in the notes that follow the poems.