The Luniferous Gazette #20: Death-Come-Quickly, a Haunting Flower for Halloween

  The Demure Gem of Watkins Glen

*

This September, I finally got the chance to visit Watkins Glen State Park in New York with a family member. I was born not far from that location, and not long before he passed away, my father told me that he’d brought me there as a baby and wished we could visit again. So, it felt a bit like returning to my roots to pay homage to this forested gorge—a veritable miniature canyon! 

The park boasts nineteen waterfalls that spangle cliff faces that can reach 200 feet in height. The deeper one ventures into its high-shadowed walls, the more it feels like you are being swallowed up by a secret side path into Narnia or Middle Earth. As the state park’s website declares, those who visit are known be left quite “spellbound.” 

The hike can be steep and muddy at times, and there are markers bored into the rock walls periodically that give the location for emergency services in case someone suffers a serious injury. I couldn’t help wondering if they were affixed due to prior incidents. Either way, the little plaques served as constant reminders to watch my step! 

I also couldn’t help marveling at the way the green foliage caught the sunbeams above. Each leaf seemed to light up like a slice of live emerald and cast a beguiling glint over the stream winding through stony layers of bedrock below. 

All this is to say that the enclosed environment lends itself to an otherworldly ethereality—enter the flower, the true star of this issue and the hidden jewel of Watkins Glen! 

I stopped dead in my tracks and begged my family member to wait so that I could capture a photo of a delicate pinkish-purple flower, hardly as large as the nail on my little finger. I had no idea what it was then, only that its quiet, airy beauty demanded my rapt gaze without delay. 

Later that evening, I would conduct an image search and discover that this tiny flower has numerous names—Geranium robertianum, or more commonly, “Herb Robert.” Some of my favorites include “Jam Tarts,” “Doll’s Shoes,” or even “Stinky Bob” as squishing it can produce an odiferous scent that is described as akin to rotting garlic. My, my, what powerful pungency is hidden in this petite little blossom! Maybe it will work against vampires in a pinch? 

In some states, it is considered a noxious weed, although in New York it is merely a “non-regulated class B noxious weed,” meaning weeding is encouraged but not presently mandated. To kill such a gossamer sprite would feel almost like a crime to my heart. It utterly enchanted me upon first viewing, after all. 

Yet these pretty petals hide more than one secret. Despite its fragile appearance, it can release chemicals that crowd out other types of healthy flora. But it’s humans who have given this demure flower its most lethal moniker—“Death-Come-Quickly.” 

This name was tied to the superstition that plucking the flower and bringing it indoors would cause someone to die soon. Some tales even link this flower to Shakespeare’s Puck, or the mischievous fairy “Robin Good-Fellow,” who will surely punish those who dare to harm it. 

Now, I didn’t pick the unassuming specimen that hypnotized me for a bright strand of seconds in Watkins Glen. Yet perhaps daring to steal a picture of Death-Come-Quickly was offense enough to earn me a warning? 

On the return hike, I didn’t trip once on the 832 stone stairs or the steep paths. However, as the parking lot grew tantalizingly close, a prodigious acorn whizzed mere millimeters from my face with extreme velocity. My family member was witness to this errant missile and laughed uproariously as they declared that I almost became Watkins Glen’s first confirmed acorn fatality. 

This near-accident might seem like mere coincidence, except for the fact that I was almost squashed by massive trees on two other occasions in my life—but that’s a story for another day. 

Wishing you all a Happy Halloween! May you gather a bounty of scrumptious candy, but perhaps, have a care—beware of any charming flower you are tempted to bring into your home that spooktacular evening . . . . 

Sources:

“Herb Robert Identification and Control.” KingCounty.gov. 
<https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dnrp/nature-recreation/environment-ecology-conservation/noxious-weeds/identification-control/herb-robert>

“Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum, Wild Geranium).” Highbury Wildlife 
Garden. <http://highburywildlifegarden.org.uk/the-garden/bees-faves/herb-robert/> 

“Saint or Sprite?” (June 17, 2011). The Medieval Garden Enclosed. The Cloisters 
Museum and Gardens. Metmuseum.org. <https://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/2011/06/17/saint-or-sprite/>    

Watkins Glen State Park. New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic 
Preservation. <https://parks.ny.gov/visit/state-parks/watkins-glen-state-park#about>

“Weed of the Month: Herb Robert” (May 19, 2016). Harringayonline. <https://harringayonline.com/forum/topics/weed-of-the-month-herb-robert>
 

 ~*~ 

Thanks for reading! Subscribe here if you'd like my free Substack newsletter dropped into your inbox every Wednesday. 

 

 

 

The Luniferous Gazette #19: Hop onto "A Lake and a Fairy Boat" with me

The Poetic Dream of Thomas Hood

 

I first read Thomas Hood’s poem, “A Lake and a Fairy Boat,” when I was a teenager with a head still full of Lothlórien’s golden murmurings and the wild sails of The Dawn Treader. The three stanzas were filled with absolutely everything I loved—

Whimsy and gossamer, rubies and pearls—and wonder beyond the realm of dragons, beyond the harsh reach of reality until the last two lines. There, the poem breaks against the most forlorn of realizations and the deepest of longings: 

“But fairies have broke their wands,
And wishing has lost its power!”

This poem was published almost 200 years ago in Hood’s book, The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies. And yet, even today, to read it aloud is to taste the echo of melancholy and imagination inked fresh on the tip of the tongue, newly-gemmed as a drop of blood—

Or a castaway jewel of the mind.   

This poem makes me just a little braver every time I read it. Or in this case, draw it. I’ve been messing around with Artweaver since June. I have several big projects in mind, but just the sheer idea of what I want to accomplish can feel overwhelming. Experimenting with digital art in the format of a comic is great practice, and I hope to sketch out a new one every 4-6 weeks. 

Illustrating this single comic took me over five hours, but I don’t regret a second of it. Hood’s words remind me that just because something is daunting doesn’t mean the venture isn’t worth it!

A dear cousin recently shared this wisdom from our late princess, Carrie Fisher: 

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”

May we all hop onto the fairy boat in our heart and follow the currents to the farthest shores of our wishes. 

 

 

 ~*~ 

Thanks for reading! Subscribe here if you'd like my free Substack newsletter dropped into your inbox every Wednesday. 

 

The Luniferous Gazette #18: Angie's Earrings

In Memory of My Cousin

Angie’s Earrings

My cousin Angie took me to the mall 
to get my ears pierced at thirteen, 
a looong overdue rite of passage. 
I can still feel the prick of pain 
followed by the instant 
aura of glamor. 

She always treated me that way—
like I had worth and sparkle.
Even though I was several 
years younger, Angie never 
saw me as just a pesky kid.

When I was in middle school,
she took me to a college poetry 
workshop while she studied for 
nursing tests in the hallway all
because she knew how much 
I treasured ink and page!

Who does that? Why, Angela. 
Her full name twinkled 
like a jewel in my mind,
and my child’s heart knew
without saying that kindness 
was just her way of being. 

Maybe that’s why Angie wore 
the most hilarious earrings as a nurse . . .
a milk carton and a cookie with a big
bite out it, or a hydrant and a dalmatian, 
all to give her patients a good laugh—
A good life. My cousin died too young, 
hit head-on by a driver on drugs while 
coming home late from work one night. 

Yet even decades later, I have never forgotten 
the thrill of watching The Last Unicorn 
at a sleepover with her, or choosing 
my first pair of pierced earrings 
together at Claire’s, because 
perhaps I still wish to sparkle 
something a little like Angie 
and her happy earrings. 

I sometimes wonder why it seems like the kindest people I have known in life leave before me. After all, didn’t they deserve this shared span of time more than—

Yet the random whims of mortality deal out their end, and suddenly I’m left only with softly fraying memories, like gentle ghosts, echoing their presence. 

My cousin Angie was a genuinely loving person who went out of her way to be truly kind to me when she didn’t have to make that effort, and I’ll never forget that about her. 

I don't think I will ever become as gentle-hearted as Angie, but I believe the quiet beauty of even a severed-short existence such as hers can still teach me something today. 

I heard this starlit saying years ago, and I hold it like a silver seam against my own heart when life gets too hard—remember that even when a star goes out, the last path of its light continues onward. Rays travel forward, shining steadfast. 

All the goodness of a life (having been) may yet add light to my own (being now)—

If I let it. If I learn. I bind this bright truth to my own silhouette in the dark.   

Poem Cited:

“Angie’s Earrings” (October 2025). Northern Narratives, 9. 64-65. 

 ~*~ 

Thanks for reading! Subscribe here if you'd like my free Substack newsletter dropped into your inbox every Wednesday. 

The Lunar Halo Edition

In May, I made quite the lofty pronouncement . . . I wanted my joy back! A slanting sparkle I lost long ago when I gave up part of who I used to be to time. Now after many mangled drafts, I am happy to share the Lunar Halo edition of Stealing the Dark Moon: 

I must confess that this single piece took me months of messing around on Artweaver. While not a perfect mirror of my initial idea, I learned a lot from practicing. And I have so many projects I look forward to tackling next! I want to illustrate three of my mom's poems. I have a backlog of children's stories and novels I wish to create art for in the future.

I hope with each new experiment, I gain a pixel's worth of confidence. 

 

The Luniferous Gazette #17: A Review of The Changeling by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Rewilding Hearts in Bent Oaks Grove

 

If I was banished from Earth with just one book, let it be this one.  

I believe I was about twelve when my parents first introduced me to Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s splendiferous Green Sky trilogy, but The Changeling will always be my favorite book by her. This middle grade novel juxtaposes the transcendence of two children's imaginations against the brittle harshness of reality. Yet it's not just about escaping reality, but rather, learning how to grow up in it while not losing the inherent wildness within. 

Martha Abbott is a lonely, timid girl who forms an unlikely friendship with Ivy, a member of the notorious Carson family known for causing trouble in town. Martha is fascinated by the peculiar, almost otherworldly Ivy, who claims she is a changeling switched at birth with the “real” Ivy. As they grow up together, the pair get into all sorts of scrapes and weave an intricate dream world where both belong, but neither can stay. 

The story is told from Martha’s perspective, and the reader learns very quickly that she is a shy and awkward child who doesn’t fit easily into a daily existence that often feels scary and confusing: “The rest of the Abbotts fought quietly and politely by using words that said one thing and meant another. It was a dangerous game with rules that Martha could never understand, and so long before she had started crying instead” (Snyder 29). 

In fact, Martha is teased as a “champion crybaby” who bursts into so many fits of wailing that she must seek refuge in her very own place of tears—a luggage closet jokingly given the nickname “Marty’s Mousehole” (30). The raw honesty of Snyder’s portrayal of this cowardly protagonist only makes Martha more relatable in my eyes rather than weak-willed or unlikable. After all, how many of us have also been a weeping and fearful “Martha” at some point in our own life? Even after we are “all grown-up,” being human means being Martha sometimes. 

Meeting Ivy gives Martha the tiny push she needs to embrace a lost spirit of courage and curiosity. In a chance encounter at school in second grade, Ivy helps Martha to remember her imaginary friend, “Lion,” who comforted her in the dark as a child until she was forced to abandon him because of her family’s teasing. A bond of friendship is forged as the two children search for him together, and “[…] Martha always remembered how excited she felt—as if she’d already found Lion again, or something even better” (25). 

The two girls spend much of their free time outdoors together in the woods of Bent Oaks Grove imagining an elaborate fantasy world that draws on similar ideas inked in Snyder’s Green Sky trilogy. Accidental mischief and mayhem follow them as they rescue ducklings covered in oil and attempt to kidnap a beloved elderly horse to save it from a feared dire fate. Through every escapade, Ivy is Martha’s best friend and creative confidante—until she isn’t. 

Sometimes, she simply vanishes from Martha’s life as the Carson family abruptly skips town (whether for unpaid bills or trouble with the law), only to turn up again randomly years later ready to pick up their friendship. Still, a gossamer horizon always lies between them. Perhaps the best description Snyder gives of Ivy is Martha’s observation, “There was a kind of blur about her, as if she had moved to a distance that had nothing to do with space” (115). 

What I especially love about this novel is how naturally the story approaches the first bittersweet realizations that come in childhood. For example, Ivy’s fateful encounter with the world of professional ballet. Though she was born a free-spirited dancer, Ivy instantly becomes frustrated with her inability to master the same moves that she witnessed in a ballet performance. While she knows that her family can’t afford lessons, she vows one day to learn how to dance and “do such perfect—perfect—things, so easily, and—” (121). Her anguish and determination mirror the nascent heart of lofty dreams that stretch with us all into adulthood.   

Change and tumult are inevitable parts of growing up, as are a teenager’s “very mixed-up feelings about almost everything” that hold both the lowest and highest moments of happiness (136). When Martha enters seventh grade, Snyder notes, “Everything stayed disgustingly the same—and at the same time changed so rapidly that she sometimes felt there was nothing she could count on as being fully true” (136).  

Faced with cliques and confusing relationships with her school peers, Martha becomes overwhelmed by a sense that everything is “phony and unreal” (138). Even herself sometimes! Snyder states, “it would suddenly seem just too much of an effort and she would turn quiet and strange and escape to her room and her books, and sometimes to Bent Oaks Grove” (138). 

Resisting the growing clamor, Martha’s withdrawal from accessibility becomes an instinctive act of self-protection. Perhaps in some ways also a lost and vulnerable art of introspection in today’s world. However, sometimes the storms of life will simply not let one be. 

When Ivy’s mesmerizing dance tryout earns her the coveted spot as lead dancer in a school production over their more popular classmate Kelly, Martha senses the approach of doom. Kelly starts a rumor campaign to portray Ivy as having unjustly stolen the position as only a trashy Carson would do. But when Kelly promises to be Martha’s friend if she’ll just “drop” Ivy, for the first time in her life, Martha finds her own voice. She firmly calls out Kelly’s unkind and disingenuous behavior, not yet understanding the painful price that comes with speaking up.  

Enraged, Kelly later accuses the two girls of causing property damage at the school. The cleverness of this ploy relies on the fact that no one will possibly believe in a Carson’s innocence over the “angel-faced version of Kelly” (187). When a tearful Martha tries to console Ivy and remind her that she’s a truly a changeling, not a Carson, Ivy explodes—

“Shut up! I’m no changeling. There’s no such thing as a changeling. I was lying to you” (190). 

Although the true culprit is later revealed, irrevocable damage is done—Ivy’s family abruptly leaves town and the two friends never cross paths again after their last argument. But their intertwined story isn’t over even as seasons pass, and Martha grows more confident in her own identity and busily involved in school drama performances. Martha never quite forgets Ivy and is startled to encounter the spitting, younger image of her friend in Bent Oaks Grove one day. Only this time it is not Ivy, but her little sister Josie with a letter meant just for her. 

Readers are rewarded with an unexpectedly happy twist to this coming-of-age tale as Ivy now lives in New York thanks to an inheritance earmarked exclusively for dance school fees. Ivy has grand plans to study hard and become a ballet dancer! And one very crucial retraction to make—she didn’t mean what she said about changelings, of course. 

“But lots of people are changelings, really,” Ivy insists. “You might be one yourself, Martha Abbott. I wouldn’t be surprised” (219). 

The story ends with Martha raising her face into the wind and relishing “the wild push and pull of the darkness that flowed around her” (220). Oh, and the realization that she, too, might truly be a changeling at heart. Perhaps Snyder is suggesting that to be a changeling isn’t just a state of being? Maybe it’s more a becoming. For whenever we give ourselves permission to wonder again, our imagination and curiosity may flow as freely as Ivy’s dance.  

Work Cited:

Snyder, Zilpha Keatley. The Changeling. Backinprint.com. 2004. 

 ~*~ 

Thanks for reading! Subscribe here if you'd like my free Substack newsletter dropped into your inbox every Wednesday. 

The Luniferous Gazette #16: The Odd-day Motto

 Today is not a day to make beds

  

 *Photo of our (late) first adopted elder cat, Baby.

 

 The Odd-day 
Motto

Today
is not a day
to make beds

(I knew it the minute
I woke up).

Today
is not a day
for the order of things,
erudition or ponderous
philosophies—

Today
I shall live
a mess on purpose.

I wrote this poem many years ago, and the older I get, the more sense it makes to me. Perhaps that is also why my grammie, Nancy Anne, pinned this silly little poem onto her fridge until it was nothing but a faded paper scrap. She understood that some days are odd days out. 

Sometimes life gets to be overwhelming, and smiling in person and curating sparklestars online feels painfully performative while cinders pile up in the mind and heart. This poem is a reminder to myself that it is all right to have days where you just don’t try.

You rest.

You let the bed stay unmade. Wrinkles and chaos are inescapable, after all! And while it might mean life is imperfect and messy sometimes, rest is a raft, and that is worthy of our effort, too. 

 ~*~ 

Thanks for reading! Subscribe here if you'd like my free Substack newsletter dropped into your inbox every Wednesday.