rain lilies dawn’s fading stars
by James Brush
Tag: wildflowers
the road to summer
a field full of primroses
& a killdeer’s cries
a sulphur butterfly
rides prairie wind
late sunflowers
lean heavy
against a barbwire fence
firewheels
bees navigate
fields of wildflowers
I stop and watch
idle
—
firewheels
windblown, yellow
dancing, twisting, shimmering
lunchtime passes too fast
enough
—
stoptime
fields in red bloom
killdeer race through the grass
and bees hover silently, slow
firewheels
—
This is an attempt to write cinquains in the three formats found here, but using the same or similar topics and words (firewheels, stop, enough) that I also used in today’s NaPoWriMo / PAD tritina poem “It Is Enough.”
It Is Enough
It is enough to walk among the firewheels
even if for a few minutes. It is enough
to breath the springtime air and let time stop.
It is enough to walk up the hill to the stop
sign. It is enough to feel the sun that firewheels
across the sky. Is it enough to say enough?
It is enough to savor cool water, enough
to lean against the wind imagining it will stop.
It is enough for bees to navigate the firewheels.
The firewheels are enough to make time stop.
—
bluebonnets fading
their scent lingers in the air
firewheels begin
Mexican hat
and fields of thistle
a still sky
star violet
alone among primroses
and wind
Last weekend we went down to a nearby park to take the requisite child-in-a-field-of-bluebonnet photos that every every kid raised in central Texas has. This was S’s first time sitting in a field of flowers and he was quite suspicious of the whole procedure what with its overload of colors, sensations and fluttering butterflies, but we did get some good ones.
Last spring, with the drought underway, there were very few wildflowers and almost none of the Texas bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) for which central Texas is particularly famous, but with the surprising amount of rain we’ve had through winter and early spring, the wildflowers are putting on quite a show. Where it’s not blue, it’s bright yellow, so deep it seems as if the green of the grass beneath is an afterthought. Wildflowers own the prairie and lick like benign flame against the trunks of live oaks and mountain juniper.
Soon the bluebonnets will fade and we’ll see the reds: Mexican hat and firewheel and the bright yellows of the prickly pear as spring’s flowers give way to summer’s and heat and light drive us indoors or to oak-shaded patios and margaritas and iced tea. But for now, spring in Texas is about a good as it gets.
Texas Thistle (Cirsium texanum), where the goldfinches go.