The Hollow (35)
after failing
this year to blossom
Clintonia leaves
seedhead
the two sterile florets’
showy bracts
the mountain road’s
one straight stretch
turning to look back
headwater stream
a dark and slender
mink’s road
Poems on the topic: flower
Poems on the topic “flower” on Poets.by.
The Hollow (25)
leaning
this way or that
forest-dwelling goldenrod
not a mere patch
but a stand
the black cohosh
fairy bells
berried
under their leaves
naked-flowered tick trefoil
“leaflets three” but only
the name itches
Drunkard’s dream
drinking alone
among the flowers of evil—
the bees are all dead
Trailing arbutus
The first warm day.
The mountain hums with insects
and the valley with motorcycles.
Between twists of old coyote scat
and dried grass curled
tight as pubic hair,
close to the ground, the trailing
arbutus’ fragrant parts
begin to open.
Bullet Casing
Squat bottle.
Who drained its amnesia?
Organ pipe.
Why emit so high a C?
Empty bud.
Where did the flower open
its red petals?
Molted exoskeleton.
What imago wouldn’t flee
such a narrow corpse?
Anemone
Wind flower
open book
wheel that shares an axle
with the earth
your wild moods
are mead
to a solitary bee
let’s take all spring
to read the road
Yucca
Aboveground, I am all blade,
shedding filaments to keep
my edges keen. I can go months
& months without water.
My connections to this sand-
stone ridge run deep.
But I don’t know why when I blossom,
nothing happens. My nights
have never turned incandescent
at the touch of fabled wings.
My panicle is a pale flag
that no one ever salutes.
This couldn’t be exile, could it?
There’s desert enough here
for those who wait.
All through the dry season,
Herbaceous
Goatweed goatweed how you brighten
my waste places with your yellow stars
blossoming in the deep space between
my shoulder blades, where the sun’s
too weak to rise. Like any lover
you make me dizzy and anxious, I can’t
get it up any more and you play
badly with other medicines, such as
dust and pillbugs. Call me a shaman
fundamentalist, but my dry bones
have never felt more possessed of life.
In the otherworld I’m growing a green husk.
Painted Trillium
Trillium undulatum
Painted lady, late riser,
you rush out of the ground,
get pollinated on the fly
sometimes before
your petals fully open,
so that within one day
after emergence they are
already turning translucent,
your pink makeup fading
as the light-flooded
forest dims to leaf-out.
But that’s your true
element, isn’t it?
The shade.
Even unpollinated
Goldthread
Coptis trifolia
White-lipped anthers
purse & part.
The sturdy styles end in hooks —
it’s not enough to be adhesive.
Nectar pools in the petals’
yellow spoons
above a white dish of sepals,
which shatters in the first hard wind.
This blooming is so early & brief,
the leaves are better known:
like the glossiest strawberry leaves
you’ve ever seen
growing in the least fertile,
most pristine parts of the forest,
far from plow & logger,
Early Meadow-Rue
Thalictrum dioicum
Dioicum: separate houses.
Here the male
& there the female.
Clouds rise from the male plant
& dangle yellow weather.
From the female plant,
ten-fingered hands stretch
in all directions.
Without scent or nectar,
what flying thing will be
their go-between?
There’s only the wind.
But this meadow-rue
has abandoned the meadow,
so it must flower early or
A Conference under the Sun
A weed, an insect and I
In a conference under the sun.
On the Lantana, flowers.
Pink, white and violet
They snuggle in bunches
Looking up at me like children
In awe of a giant.
Thorns prick my fingers
The stalk taut, lean like a whip
Refuses to oblige my hands
Trying to clear a path.
Then, glinting in the sun
This little Ladybird on a leaf.
Legs drawn up under the shell
She sits still, as if hoping
I wouldn’t see her.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
Or try: