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Posts Tagged ‘wildflower’

Nyctinasty

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 9, 2026| 4 Comments »

By night, the mountain gentian
closes the dark purple vase of its petals,
tightening around its most vulnerable parts,
protecting its nectar from cold night air,
from heavy dew. Everything is at stake. 
 
Oh woman who longs to stay open, 
to ever unfold, to widen your arms
in an ever expansive reach, 
what do you have to learn 
from the wisdom of wildflower, 
from the natural systole and diastole
of open and close, open and close?
 
How might your own growth
depend on learning to wrap 
those well-intentioned arms
around your own center 
and tuck in to that primary,
essential embrace? 
 

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Inner Landscape

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 31, 2025| 2 Comments »

 
 
There is inside me a field of pink paintbrush,
lush and unbounded—a riotous blush
no one has planted. It’s rooted and spread
in the places where I am most open.
Nodding pink. Waving pink.
Glorious flourishing stems of pink.
Even when I’m walking concourse T. Even
when I’m at the bank drive through.
Even when I’m waiting at the stoplight.
Even when I’m dull, still I am filled
with lavish meadows of dusky pink,
mounds and mounds of soft dusky pink,
great mountainous expanses of deepening,
opening, surprising pink, the kind of pink
that becomes more pink the longer you look.
It survives even the harshest winters,
always returning with wild and unmanaged
beauty. No one tends it, and yet it thrives.
Not that I deserve it. It’s a damn wonder, really,
a meadow of pink so generous, so vast
I’ll never stop finding new paths.

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When I’m Feeling Serious

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 18, 2025| 4 Comments »

Curled up beside me,
my girl studies the laugh
of a man she admires
and the more he guffaws
the more she guffaws,
which of course,
makes me laugh, too,
and soon the evening
is a riotous bouquet
of giggles. I gather
the sound in me like a field
of wildflowers, a pleasure
that reseeds itself,
lovely as lupine, common
as blue flax that thrives
along even the busiest road.

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When Shown What Is Possible

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 24, 2024| 10 Comments »


 
How do they do it,
the marsh marigolds
rising out of the muck,
their bright white petals
and lemon yellow centers
seemingly unmarred
by dark swampy ground?
They grow, beautiful,
not despite the muck, but
because. Because slop.
Mire. Mess. Thick mess.
Squishy boot-sucking mess.
It’s what they were made to do.
Dear heart, how about you?

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Ascent

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 9, 2023| 7 Comments »


 
There is a long ridgeline
below the towering spire
of Lizard Head summit
where the alpine clover
grow in vast pink mounds
and their sweet scent
suffuses the high, thin air
with a perfume so strong
not even today’s wind
could blow it away.
For long moments we were held
by the fragrance
the way insects
are preserved in amber—
it stilled us completely.
We belonged to the beauty.
With deep, intentional breaths
we pulled the floral sweetness
into our beings
until everything was clover,
clover, clover.
 

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How Sweet It Is

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 9, 2023| 9 Comments »

They’re small, the flowers
of mountain mahogany—
little white and red trumpets
with barely a scent, but
today, on a trail lined
with millions of tiny blossoms,
the air was hung with sweet perfume
and I breathed deeper,
as if with each pull
I could bring beauty into my lungs.
 
When I lose faith
that my smallest actions
make a difference,
let me remember myself as one of millions,
remember the wonder of walking today
through the bushes in bloom.
Hours later the scent is long gone,
but I can’t unknow
how sweet it is.

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Love Lessons

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 22, 2023| 10 Comments »


 
 
There were thousands of wild iris
in the wide, damp meadow.
Forty years later I remember it, still,
the pale purple petals fluttering
in the morning breeze.
The spring air was cold;
my feet squished in the mud,
and I picked armfuls of iris,
each bloom the loveliest.
I picked and picked
as if dozens of iris could convey
how extravagantly I loved a boy.
Loved him beyond measure.
Loved him meadowfuls.
Whole mountainfuls.
It’s so human to long to express
the inexpressible.
Forty years later, I remember
the immensity of that love—
how it changed me, made space in me
for who I am today.
Love is, perhaps, rhizomic,
like iris, spreading where no one can see.
If you could look inside me now,
you’d find fields of iris, infinite acres.
I still long to pick dozens for my loves,
even hundreds, though now I also trust
how sometimes a single stem
says everything.

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Larkspur

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 22, 2022| 10 Comments »




It prefers barren soil.
It prefers land that is dry.
It prefers to grow
without protection of trees.
The larkspur doesn’t want to compete.
It simply grows where others don’t grow,
brings beauty to the lonely ground.
It grows tall—tall enough
that the weight of its petals
might bend the stem,
might force a fall.
It says to me as I walk by,
there are many ways
to serve the world,
bringing beauty is one.

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By Chance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 30, 2022| 4 Comments »


for Andrea Bird


A person, once a stranger,
can slip into your life,
unplanned, of course,
as if brought by the wind
in much the same way
a seed of spotted saxifrage
can slip by happenstance
into a crack in a rock
then root and grow.
Eventually, the saxifrage
will split the rock open.
By then, it will be full,
its flowers prolific
and beautiful.
If you are lucky,
this once stranger
will do in time
the same to you—
will be alive in you,
crack you open
with their beauty,
make you grateful
to be so broken.

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Flourish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 27, 2020| 2 Comments »

Flourish

Whatever it is inside the larkspur

that says grow, grow, grow,

I want to know it, too. Want

to obey the voice that urges me on,

even in frost, even in rain.

I want to rise out of my own dried debris,

want to know how it is to die and return,

new and yet somehow the same.

And what is it that fuels the drive?

I want to know that— the divine

encouragement that knows

when to wait, when to push,

when to wilt, when to flourish,

when to swell into oh! bright bloom.

I want to know myself as wick,

to be lit, to be the fire itself.

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