The crocuses are finally blooming as are the Silver Maples. For me that’s the true sign of spring and not a date on a calendar or the arrival of a biologically confused rabbit (doesn’t the Easter Bunny know rabbits are placental mammals, not Monotremes?). So in celebration of the swift return of all things green and blooming, I offer three botany poems:
Lotus Seeds
He chose you carefully,
A housewife choosing ripe tomatoes
Squeezing hundreds of your sisters for firmness
He picked four.
He held you firmly
Against an ancient grinding machine
Creating a hole water would penetrate;
He asked you to grow.
He placed you in a coffee mug;
I liked that mug even though it was chipped
But I sacrificed it to you because it was what
He wanted.
He waited,
Changing your water when it became stagnant,
Watching for swelling, a sign you were still living,
He sang for you.
He was patient,
Checking you first when he came home,
A daily devotional to your future beauty,
He meditated on you.
He was vigilant,
A month or more you showed no signs
You swelled and left him breathless,
His eyes slid between you and I.
He was rewarded.
A green spike broke through shining,
A forest at the bottom of a coffee mug,
He saw you rising.
He changed the water
And found a taller mug- a glass beer stein,
A fine home for four sisters growing together
He watched you mature.
He dreams of lotus,
Covering the lake, blooming from the mud,
Resurrection in the spring time, penance for our sins,
His eyes are green.
Anatomy of a Wildflower Bouquet
Twelve Gaillardia native of the Texas prairie,
Eight spikes of lavender stolen from bumblebees,
Ten ox-eye daisies gathered from beside the road,
Seven yarrow umbels in hues of yellow and white,
And four swamp roses blushing in shades of pink.
Now they wither in a cracked coffee mug,
And there are no bees to carry their pollen
And no butterflies to drink their honeyed dew
Because I stole them from the fields and gardens,
Subverting their desires- they bloom for me alone.
Prairie
Boiling air rolls, rises,
Distorts towering grasses
As they retain pockets of heat
And belch hot breath
In putrid waves
When parted.
Follow the compass plant
To the rattlesnake master,
The false indigo,
In the grass where
Tickseed clings
As I go.
Burning claustrophobia:
A tangled labyrinth of
Big bluestem and Indian grass,
Seven feet tall,
With self made paths
And no exit.
