April 26

Poems from Scraps.

This continues an abandoned project of making poems from pieces of the guide to wildflowers.

Some White Flowers


I've sung praises of the Buffalo Soldier
while stepping on Buffalo Clover
with its heart shaped leaflets (notched at tip)
and trodden the despised Hairy Bush Clover,
a branch of the family no one wants to know,
dwelling along roadsides.

But none so hated as the Gall-of-the-Earth.
Though it flowers creamy white and bears
pinkish bracts, surely it made some damning pact
to earn such a name. In dwells in moist woods.
In the book, it besmirches the page
devoted to loose clusters of dangling bells,
rattlesnake roots. No innocent white flower
is without its malevolence.