Mid-day Poem, March 30, 2015

The woods still are brown and grey

But the icicles are gone

And now flowing water stains dark streaks

Down the dull sandstone cliff

Here and there tiny yellow wildflowers

Outrageously golden

Look out of place

I should learn their names

What the ancients called them

And what ills those early ones knew they could cure

These very flowers

I don’t recall seeing them ever before

May live only one day

And may hold in their sap

Some tonic that will dissolve

All the poisons the winter forced us to swallow.

One step ahead

I look closely at the single leaf unfurling at the edge of the trail

It is striped like fine suit-cloth

And looks out of place

I should learn its name

And what the ancients knew of it

This single leaf might be the very poultice

To draw from the blood

Every stain of the long winter

And put back into a man

A lust for life.

Copyright 2015